


The Scapegoat Senator

by ladyfnick



Series: Walsh & Co Mysteries [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Detectives, M/M, Modern Era, Murder Mystery, Politics, Pre-Slash, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-02-26 15:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13238868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfnick/pseuds/ladyfnick
Summary: When an up-and-coming congresswoman turns up dead right before an election, it's up to Walsh, Eli, and Alec to find out who didn't want her taking the senate seat. But the deeper they dig, the more it seems that there's more afoot than just a deadly smear campaign, leaving them to wonder, who really wanted Lydia Fukui dead.





	1. Chapter 1

Eli Doyle woke with a beam of sunlight shining directly into his eyes and a smile playing across his face.

His new apartment was awesome, and it gave him a little thrill of happiness every morning that he woke up in his cushy king-sized bed instead of on his shitty box spring mattress. He was happy even when he forgot to pull the curtains closed on the frankly ridiculously huge bay windows in his bedroom, and he ended up waking with the sun.

He rolled onto his side away from the irritating light and tried to go back to sleep, hauling the down comforter over his head. It was no use, he was wide awake.

“This hour should be illegal,” Eli grumbled under his breath, and gave up and climbed out of bed.

He’d crawled into bed around 1 AM thanks to his late shift at The Jade Dragon, Summerport’s shittiest fake Chinese food restaurant, so he wasn’t at his best that morning, and was entirely focused on getting coffee. This was why he didn’t notice the other occupant of his apartment, until there was a loud thud.

Eli jumped about a foot, shrieked, and, due to being a private detective’s assistant, immediately hurled the closest object in the direction the noise.

Alec Barrington-Johnsen ducked Eli’s empty coffee cup with a hissed curse and snapped, “Watch it!”

“Why are you in my apartment?!” Eli yelled back, voice just a little squeaky with fear, clutching still at his own chest. A distant part of his brain pointed out that the apartment was in fact technically Alec’s, since Alec had only strong-armed Eli into living in it, instead of forcing him to take actual ownership. Eli told that part of his brain to put a sock in it, he didn’t need its obnoxious logic so early in the morning.

Alec bent to pick up the book he’d knocked off the top of one of the many precarious piles that were scattered around the apartment, which had been the sound that had startled Eli. “Walsh sent me to get you,” he said calmly, like it wasn’t the crack of dawn and Eli hadn’t just thrown a mug at his head,

“No,” Eli said stubbornly, even as despair welled in him like a never-ending fountain of disappointment. “It’s my day off! My _first_ day off in like a month! I don’t have to scrub plum sauce off of any plates today, so I’m damn well not poking around a corpse either!”

“It’s Walsh’s first case in ages,” Alec pointed out, a familiar look of resignation on his face. It was a common expression one had while working as one of Walsh’s assistants. It was the expression of a man pushed to the breaking point of his patience while dealing with a woman of genius intellect, but who became cranky as a toddler when she was without something to keep her occupied. “If you have any ounce of compassion for me, you will help with this case.”

“Walsh can solve it by herself,” Eli grumbled and got out a new coffee mug and tried to force the single serve machine to cooperate. It was even worse than the one at Walsh’s house, since it was more temperamental and had more unnecessary buttons. He seriously should not have thrown out his old coffee machine, even if tossing out the majority of his crappy furniture had been so very cathartic. The daily fight for coffee was torture, but the thought of wasting money on a new coffee machine when he theoretically had a perfectly good one in the apartment was even worse.

“Walsh can certainly solve it by herself,” Alec agreed and then elbowed Eli away from the machine, rolling his eyes. “Walsh cannot, however, solve this case by herself without driving me insane. And probably driving half the police force insane along with me.”

He hit a few buttons on the machine and stuck Eli’s mug under it, just in time for it to start obediently spitting out fragrant-smelling coffee. Eli glowered at the machine. Damn traitorous technology, always cooperating for Alec while spurning Eli. Without even looking at Eli, Alec got out the cream and sugar and stirred it in before passing it over.

“So, you want me to suffer along with you?” Eli asked and traded Alec an empty mug for the steaming cup. “I’m not seeing why this should compel me to sacrifice my day off.” He took a sip of coffee and was faintly irritated to find Alec had added the perfect amount of cream and sugar. Stupid courteous jerk.

“There’s strength in numbers,” Alec said darkly. “You’d also be preventing a second murder, so you’d be doing a good deed.”

“What, I’d stop you from killing Walsh?” Eli asked, raising an eyebrow. Of the two of them, Alec got along better with Walsh, since he was more of her yes-man than Eli was, due to Eli’s unfortunate stubborn tendency to not endure being treated like a tool rather than a person.

Alec shook his head and slugged back half his cup of coffee like a shot, not seeming to care it was still scalding and black as an oil slick. “No, you’d stop Dr. Mullins from killing me for trying to kill Walsh.”

Eli considered this solemnly, tapping his fingers against his mug of perfectly brewed coffee. “Well in that case... I like Dr. Mullins. I’d hate to see her go to jail for murder.”

~

Walsh was irritating at least three separate police officers when Eli and Alec arrived at the crime scene, the sun still depressingly low in the morning sky. The three officers looked exhausted with dark rimmed eyes, while Walsh was in prime form, given she was secretly a human android that lived off of murder mysteries in place of sleep or any form of sustenance.

This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, so Eli turned to Alec and asked, “Who’s the client?”

Alec shook his head. “No client,” he replied, he glanced around and then leaned in towards Eli and continued in a low voice, “Someone tipped Captain Ye off, on his personal line.”

Eli’s eyes widened and he nodded his understanding. It was a poorly kept secret that Captain Ye was one of the few cops in Summerport not in the mob’s pocket, so if one wanted something done on the level, he was the one to contact. If someone had called him at his home, that meant that not only were they in the know, but that they also suspected that Summerport’s extensive underground had its fingers in the murder, along with the cavalcade of dirty cops.

“So, Ye called Walsh?” Eli asked, in an equally low voice, eyes darting around looking for any eavesdroppers, but he only saw the officers Walsh was arguing with nearby.

“Not officially,” Alec replied. “If anyone asks, we’re supposed to say my parents asked Walsh to stick her nose in.”

“Your parents?” Eli asked, surprised. The Barrington-Johnsen's weren’t shy about their disdain for Alec’s new profession given its propensity for danger and, worse, bad press.

“They know the victim,” Alec replied. “Old money friends.” He didn’t make a face, his expression remaining perfectly neutral, but his voice dripped with disgust.

They stepped inside the enormous mansion, the sound of the nearby road fading away abruptly. It was like stepping into another, much more luxurious, world, Eli reflected as he eyed the marble staircase and the fashionably minimalist foyer. A more luxurious and _murderous_ world, he amended when he noticed the drying bloodstain, just visible through an open doorway.

Just as they approached the door, Captain Ye appeared through it, expression grim.

“CSI is almost done with the scene,” Ye said, his lips pressed into a tight line below his awful, patchy moustache. “Where’s Walsh?” he asked, looking around suspiciously, like he half expected to find Walsh already in the crime scene, harassing the technicians. It was something that she’d done before.

“Outside, terrorizing your newbies,” Alec replied with a sigh.

“Of course she is,” Ye grumbled, not even remotely surprised. “She had better not scare any of them off, it was hard enough convincing the Commissioner I needed more personnel without Walsh making them quit in protest.”

“Who’s the victim?” Eli asked, eyeing the bloodstain. It looked recent, though the edges were already starting to grow tacky looking.

“Lydia Fukui, age 42, presumed cause of death is fatal bullet wound to the neck,” Ye said, the corners of his mouth twitching downward. He was a hardened police officer with years of experience with homicide, but Eli knew that Ye’s wife was around the same age. “Her housekeeper found her this morning. No official time of death yet, but she was last seen at a meeting at city hall around nine PM last night.”

“Any suspects?” Alec asked, jotting everything down in his little notebook in his incomprehensible scrawl. It was good that Eli had an excellent memory, since Alec’s notes were never legible to anyone aside from him.

“Quite a few,” Ye said, frowning. “Mrs. Fukui was running for office and the election is only a month away.”

“Politics,” Eli said, making a disgruntled face. “So, I’m assuming there were a few people pissed about a woman of colour potentially winning a seat in the senate in a red state?”

Ye nodded. “More than a few. There was at least one threatening letter sent to her office. I’ll have Sergeant Castillo get you the file.”

Alec hummed in agreement, but looked troubled. “What about anyone with a personal vendetta?” He asked, looking up from his notebook. “A smart political rival would find a way to get her tangled up in scandal, rather than stab her in her own home. Or at least not have her killed so obviously.” There was a twisted expression on his face, disgust tempered with shrewdness. Eli belatedly remembered that Mr. Barrington-Johnsen had been a state attorney general at one point, and had expected Alec to follow in his footsteps, all the way up until the point when Alec had enrolled in medical school. He’d been raised on politics, and it had been part of his life even into medical school and afterwards in his career, until Walsh had dragged him into her world and Alec’s parents had given up trying to maintain any sort of leverage over him. The whole thing made Eli feel immeasurably grateful for his own family. Even if they could be a nosey, obnoxious, and exhausting lot, at least he knew they’d always have his back when it mattered.

“At the moment, our prime suspect is her husband, Chanda Chlebek,” Ye said. “He’s been charged with assault twice before.”

“No jail time?” Eli asked curiously. Something niggled in the back of his mind- he’d heard that name somewhere before...

Ye shook his head. “No. The first was from a protest that got rowdy when several drunk men began harassing women. Chlebek found himself one hell of a lawyer and the charges were dropped. The second one was a bar brawl, but video surveillance proved that he wasn’t the one to instigate the fight and the guy who charged him decided it wasn’t worth the court case.”

“Why does his name sound familiar?” Eli asked, giving up. He might have an excellent memory, but it wasn’t infallible like Walsh’s.

“Chlebek is an MMA fighter,” Ye explained. “Not a big name, but he’s only just entered his peak in the last few years and he became more of a public figure after he married Ms. Fukui.”

Before either of them could think of anything else to ask, Walsh entered the foyer, the newbie officers trailing after her, looking completely worn down.

“Walsh,” Ye grumbled, moustache twitching in irritation. “You had better not be harassing my officers.”

“I was merely inquiring about the housekeeper who found the body,” Walsh said, her words clipped. “I require every detail since you won’t let me interview her.”

“The poor woman is in the hospital. She took a bad fall and injured her hip when she found Ms. Fukui, she doesn’t need you pestering her,” Ye said, crossing his arms. Everything about his body language was saying that Walsh, for once, wasn’t going to get her way. The three newbie officers swiveled their eyes from Walsh to Ye and back again, like spectators at a particularly aggressive tennis match. “And she has an airtight alibi for last night, so I hardly see why interrogating her would be necessary,” Ye added.

“ _You_ wouldn’t,” Walsh said curtly, but she seemed to accept that Ye wasn’t about to budge, and she let the argument drop and carefully stepped over the bloodstain on the floor, entering the crime scene.

“Walsh-” Ye started to snarl, but was interrupted by Sergeant Castillo exiting the crime scene room.

“CSI is done with the crime scene, they’re sending a few samples to the lab,” Sergeant Castillo said, making Ye grumble wordlessly, but he allowed Alec and Eli to follow after Walsh.

The room proved to be a rather spacious home office, large windows letting in early morning light along one wall. It probably had been very beautiful at one point, but the room was a disaster. Papers were strewn across the floor, chairs were overturned, a painting had been torn from the wall, it’s frame reduced to splinters of wood and glass, a potted plant had been smashed to pieces, dirt speckling the expensive wallpaper.

And of course, there was the body lying on the floor near the door.

Lydia Fukui had died laying on her side, her small body curled into itself, one hand pressed against the fatal wound on her neck. Her other arm was outstretched, her hand positioned like she’d been clutching at the floor. Blood had pooled under her body, but enough had spilled on the doorway to form the puddle that had been visible from the foyer.

Alec and Eli looked to Walsh expectantly, but she waved them off, implicitly telling them to report their findings back to her first.

Eli carefully stepped through the mess on the floor, trying not to disturb anything as he took in the disaster around him. He carefully photographed the room, mentally trying to recreate what had happened.

He was betting Mrs. Fukui had been working at her desk when her attacker had entered the room... But she was lying on the other side of the room. Maybe she’d been going to bed? Or leaving the room for some reason... But if her attacker had a gun, why hadn’t they just snuck up on her and shot her? The house had been empty apart from Mrs. Fukui, if the attacker could easily sneak into the house without detection, surely they could have found a way to shoot her without instigating a fight. And the room made it clear there had been a struggle first, so simply killing her couldn’t be the motive behind the murder, there had to be something more...

“Well?” Walsh prompted when neither of her assistants said anything useful for several long minutes.

“Hear me out on this one- I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the victim died from a bullet wound to her neck,” Alec said, looking up from the body, his voice paper dry.

Walsh was not amused, though Eli had to hide a snort behind a fake sounding cough.

She didn’t say a word, but her steely gaze said enough as it was. Alec sighed and turned back to the corpse. Sometimes he missed the days when his job involved living bodies.

He stared down at Fukui for another long moment and sighed deeply again. “She died quickly, though not instantly,” he said at last his voice soft. “Even if paramedics had been called, I doubt she would have survived.” He gently moved one of her arms and examined it, before setting it back down as it had been before. “No signs of any defensive wounds or bruising. Nothing else interesting about the body. I’d say estimated time of death is around midnight.”

“You’re sure there’s no defensive wounds?” Eli asked with a frown, looking down at the body. “Obviously there was a fight of some kind,” he said, gesturing at the disaster that encompassed the entire room.

“Not one that left her with any injuries,” Alec retorted, voice tart. He hated being questioned over his field of expertise, especially since he worked with a pair of forensic geniuses and this was _his_ specialty. “This woman died of a single bullet, small caliber- maybe 9 millimeters. Going by the blood splatter, it was fired from several feet away, without much of a struggle. We’re looking for someone who’s a crack shot, since that wouldn’t have been an easy one to make.”

“It’s weird though,” Eli said, turning around the room slowly. “The entire room is trashed, not just at her desk or something. It’s a huge room. How do you have a fight with someone with a gun, and there’s only one shot, and you don’t get any injuries aside from the one bullet wound? She should at least have a few scratches from some of this debris.”

“Maybe the mess was from her trying to get away?” Alec suggested, standing up and stepping away from the body.

Eli frowned. That didn’t seem quite right. There was only one door, and it wasn’t like there was anywhere to hide in the office. If someone was pointing a gun at him, he’d stay still. If they were trying to subdue him, he’d try and get away, maybe head for the door. He wouldn’t upend three separate book cases in three different corners of the room and then go to the trouble of smashing a picture frame to tiny pieces. An attacker wouldn’t do that either, if their goal was murder. But if they were only trying to scare someone...

Eli made an aggrieved noise and ran both hands through his tangled hair irritably. Even if the attacker had been trying to put the fear of god into Mrs. Fukui and had accidentally killed her, he’d think she’d have at least a few scratches on her. Her smart pantsuit wasn’t even disheveled, apart from all the blood soaked into it. For god’s sake, her hair was barely even mussed!

His eyes landed on the puddle of blood at the door way.

“I’m guessing she was shot her here, then she stumbled and fell over there,” Eli said, gesturing at the two spots. “And then the killer stepped in her blood,” he added, eyes widening when he noticed the edge of what looked like a boot print a few inches away from the puddle, nearly hidden by an overturned chair.

“These papers are all to do with Mrs. Fukui and Mr. Chlebek’s upcoming divorce,” Walsh added, gesturing to the papers strewn about the desk.

“I guess that’s it then,” Alec said, eyes on the papers on the floor. “MMA fighter finds out that his wife is getting a divorce, they argue, he shoots her.”

“Mrs. Fukui does have a gun registered under her name,” one of the young police officers piped up from the open doorway.

The three of them turned to look at the door. The police officers Walsh had been interrogating were all crowded in the doorway, silently watching Walsh do her thing. The one who’d spoken smiled eagerly. Behind them, Ye scowled in irritation. And to think, he’d been the one to call Walsh in.

Theirs was a complicated relationship, Eli reflected absently.

“I presume it’s a handgun, and that it’s currently missing,” Walsh said directly to Ye, who nodded.

“Yes, it seems like the obvious murder weapon. Mr. Chlebek lived here until recently, so he would have known where Mrs. Fukui kept it.”

Walsh nodded, but there was a look on her face that said she wasn’t convinced, if one was fluent in her micro-expressions like Eli was.

She carefully stepped through the crime scene to where Eli was photographing the footprint in the blood.

She gave it a single glance before pronouncing, “It was planted. No person would have stepped at that angle towards the wall.”

“Seriously?” One of the young police officers said, the same one who’d spoken up before. Her voice filled with disbelief.

“I have to agree, Walsh,” Ye said, one eyebrow ticking up slightly. “You take two seconds to see a footprint and decide it’s a fake?”

Walsh made an irritated noise and gestured at Eli, saying, “Stand up. Now position yourself like the footprint would have you stand.”

Eli eyed the print and lined his foot up next to it, careful not to touch it. The print was from a left foot, and was angled with the toe pointing towards the wall. It was also very close to the wall, forcing Eli to wobble precariously with his right leg bent awkwardly behind him so that he could match the print without standing fully pressed against the wall.

Walsh looked at the officer who’d questioned her and demanded, “What’s your name?”

The officer was wide eyed with nerves, but she bravely said, “I’m Officer Skalicky.”

Walsh eyed her up and down. She wasn’t impressed. Skalicky was the only woman out of the new officers. Out of the half dozen CSI techs who had been swarming the house, there had been one other woman. It had been a good fifteen years since Walsh had been that newbie officer, alone amidst a sea of men, and she doubted things had much changed. Skalicky was wide-eyed and desperate to impress anyone who so much as looked at her. She still probably thought she could make a difference, for herself and for women willing to follow after her.

Walsh wasn’t about to baby her.

“Well, Skalicky, unless you’re suggesting the murderer was pirouetting through the crime scene, there is no way they would have unintentionally leave a footprint like that. It is an obvious attempt to frame someone else.” She shot Ye a dour look and added, “Next time you hire new officers, try not to choose the uselessly stupid ones.”

Officer Skalicky went red from the collar of her uniform all the way up to her hairline and bit her lip, eyes trained on the ground in humiliation. The other two officers inched away from her, like earning Walsh’s ire was contagious. Ye only sighed and shook his head.

“I should have known better. Alright, Walsh, you were right. And quit insulting my newbies, not all of us are instant forensic geniuses.”

Walsh didn’t say anything condescending like Eli suspected she wanted to, but the look she shot Ye said more than enough.

~

They took a cab to the police station to get Chanda Chlebek’s records, with Walsh going inside and leaving her assistants to wait in the car. It seriously made Eli feel like a kid waiting for a parent or something, but he was happy to avoid going into the station. He did not have many happy memories in that place, not to mention the awful smell of body odor and stale coffee that pervaded the very walls of the place and hung in the air like an omnipresent miasma.

There was a sudden loud ringing, and Eli automatically patted his pockets for his phone- though he belatedly realized it couldn’t be his, since his was old and cranky and generally made a strange garbled beep when he got calls. It really hadn’t appreciated that trip into the river on his first case with Walsh seven months previous.

“What?” Alec asked into the phone, his voice tightly clipped.

Eli raised an eyebrow at him, but Alec turned his face away, expression tight. It was strange for Alec to get a phone call from someone who wasn’t Walsh or Eli. He was pretty close mouthed about his past before coming to work for Walsh, but the few bits he’d revealed to Eli suggested that he no longer spoke to any of his old coworkers at the private hospital where he’d worked, nor any of the people he’d gone to school with. Or really anyone who wasn’t Eli or Walsh.

“No, I won’t be there,” Alec said curtly. “I told you months ago that I wasn’t coming. I don’t see why this is a surprise, mother.”

Eli stared at him in shock. Alec might have been reticent about his past, but he’d been clear about one thing: his parents did not approve of his change in careers, trading in a respectable rising position in the city’s private hospital for what was a mix of secretarial work and babysitting of a woman on the wrong side of eccentric in polite society.

“I don’t care if Ashley will be there, _I_ won’t be,” Alec continued, his tone only growing more clipped with each word. “Well you shouldn’t have told her that. It’s hardly my fault. Because I’m busy. Goodbye.” He jabbed a finger at the touch screen angrily to end the call and sighed deeply, rubbing a hand over his face.

“What was that all about?” Eli couldn’t help but ask. He and Alec might not always get along, but he couldn’t help a little curiosity over his somewhat mysterious companion. It was all Walsh’s nosey influence, really.

Alec rolled his eyes, irritation written across every feature on his handsome face. “Mother was trying to pressgang me into going to some obnoxious fundraiser later this week,” he said, sneering. “Which I won’t set foot in. If I wanted to listen to pompous jackasses pat themselves on the back for throwing money they don’t need at causes they don’t care about, I’d just visit my father’s office around Christmas.”

Eli was startled by the bitter note in Alec’s voice- he could be a prickly, sour jerk when he wasn’t hiding behind his mild mannered public face for clients, but he never sounded quite so jaded.

“Who’s Ashley? Wait, let me guess- secret fiancée?” He asked, trying to make Alec roll his eyes or something, because the aggrieved look on his face was just so off putting and out of place that it made Eli feel like the world was off kilter.

It worked, to an extent. Alec snorted, his expression turning wry, though his voice still held a bitter edge to it. “My mother wishes. No, she’s some politician’s daughter, one of father’s cronies. She took a liking to me when we were teenagers, and it would make both of our parents happy if I hooked up with her. Unfortunately, she has all the common sense of a brain-damaged Yorkshire Terrier, and I can’t stand to be in the same room as her for more than a few minutes at a time. Not that that’s necessarily a deterrent for my parents- when I was growing up I only ever saw them in the same room at society parties.”

“Stupidity does seem to be contagious,” Eli said with a grin, feeling a little surprised to have gotten a straight answer. He’d half expected Alec to sneer and tell him it wasn’t any of his business.

“And yet, I still spend time with you,” Alec said, but there was a hint of fondness in his voice that warmed Eli to the core.

Walsh climbed back into the cab, holding a thin file in one elegant hand.

“Captain Ye needs to train the idiocy out of his staff,” she said in a disgusted tone. “It took far too much effort to get the information I needed.”

“I mean, not giving out police information to whoever asks for it is probably a good trait for police officers to have,” Eli said and then ducked his head at the look Walsh shot him.

~

Their next stop was at the gym where Lydia Fukui’s husband Chanda Chlebek trained. When they arrived, it seemed to be mostly empty, given there were only three cars in its large parking lot.

Eli held back an automatic shudder at the sight of the exercise equipment through the front windows- being slightly scrawny, openly gay and possessing more snark than common sense in high school had given him a healthy phobia of any place occupied by muscle-y guys.

Walsh lead them inside, making a beeline for the very back of the place without hesitation, like she’d visited a thousand times before. The gym was divided into two sections, a traditional gym area with cardio equipment and weights, and an open area obviously meant for sparring or whatever MMA fighters did for training. Eli had no idea, but he assumed it had to do with punching each other a lot, since that was what the two dudes in the roped off area seemed to be doing.

They stopped though, when they spotted Walsh skirting around the ring, heading towards what looked like an office, the blinds pulled shut across the window.

“Hey!” One of the guys called after them, stepping around his partner. “You can’t be in here!”

Walsh didn’t even look back at him, just continued towards the office.

“We’ll just be a minute!” Alec called back, a pleasantly bland smile on his face. Eli just eyed the two men warily. Obviously there was no incentive for two strangers to beat him up, but he couldn’t quite drop the old paranoia.

The office was small and made smaller by the disorganized stacks of paper that overwhelmed two desks crammed into the space. A young black man was seated at an ancient-looking office chair, scowling at a laptop propped on one of the smaller piles of paper.

“Chanda Chlebek?” Walsh asked. The man turned and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. Even seated it was obvious that he was very tall and was all but made of muscle. One of his hulking arms looked like it might weigh twice what all of Eli weighed. He had a handsome face, though his nose was a little crooked, and his face twisted into a scowl at the sight of Walsh. He was also a solid ten years younger than Lydia Fukui, likely closer to fifteen, which made Eli raise his eyebrows.

“I’ve already spoken with the police,” Chanda said, his voice filled with irritation. “I didn’t kill my wife. I shouldn’t have to prove my innocence when there’s no evidence against me, aside from my profession.”

“And your upcoming divorce,” Alec said casually, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame.

Chanda stared him down, his brown eyes flinty. “I think you’ll find that _I_ was the one filing for divorce. If you’d bothered to spend more than thirty seconds before deciding that the black MMA fighter had to be the murderer, you would know that.”

“I don’t think you killed Fukui,” Walsh said bluntly, not seeming to notice the startled Chanda and both of her assistants shot her. “I believe someone else did, and is attempting to frame you.”

Chanda stared at her silently for a full thirty seconds.

“If you’re trying to trick me into saying something....” he said warily, but Walsh waved him off impatiently.

“Hardly. It’s obvious, looking at the crime scene. The divorce papers were planted after the room was destroyed, given that they weren’t damaged like the rest of the room was. There was also a footprint that was made to look like it belonged to the culprit, which was poorly planted. I expect you have a pair of shoes that went missing recently?” Walsh inquired.

Chanda’s face lost some of its wariness, looking surprised as he said, “Yes. A pair was stolen out of my locker last week. I assumed it was one of the guys pulling a prank on me or something. These things happen.”

“Last week?” Walsh asked, eyes narrowing. “Unexpected. Having the foresight to steal your shoes that far ahead does not match how sloppy the planting of false evidence was.”

“Well, I mean, how sloppy is it really, if the police didn’t notice it wasn’t real?” Eli asked hesitantly.

Walsh shot him a dour look. “I suspect even Captain Ye have would have noticed the irregularity of the footprint, given time,” she said to Eli, clearly displeased with being questioned. Eli shrugged apologetically and Walsh sighed and turned back to Chanda. “Is there anyone who’d want to frame you for murder? A rival perhaps?”

Chanda appeared unimpressed. “Look, whatever you’ve heard about my profession, it isn’t accurate. Sure, there are rivalries, and plenty of the guys can be real dicks- but murder? No way. I mean they make more money if they have someone to fight. It wouldn’t be anyone I know.”

“Where were you on the night of the murder?” Alec asked. Chanda shot him an unimpressed look. “Not because we think you killed your wife, I’m just trying to establish the sequence of events,” he amended quickly.

Chanda didn’t seem appeased, but he still replied, voice curt, “I was at home.”

“Alone?” Alec asked. “You don’t live with Mrs. Fukui anymore, correct?”

Chanda sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose, looking irritated. “Yes, alone. I left the gym at seven, got groceries at eight. I have an apartment near the gym; I moved out of the house last month when we decided to get a divorce.”

“And why was that?” Walsh asked.

“This is sounding less and less like you think I’m innocent,” Chanda said, his expression darkening further. Alec didn’t say anything, so Chanda pursed his lips, exhaled sharply, and said in a carefully controlled voice, “Look. I care about Lydia, she’s- she was a great woman. We agreed that our marriage wasn’t working for either of us and so we decided to end things.”

“Even though the election cycle was nearing its end?” Walsh asked, her expression was mild, but Chanda only grew more defensive, eyes narrowing as she continued, “Getting a divorce at this time would be impractical for a woman fighting an uphill battle into a senate seat.”

Chanda stood, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. “Look,” he all but snarled, “If you think I killed my wife then just get out and stop wasting my time.”

“Mr. Chlebek, this information is all things the killer would know and will manipulate to make you seem all the more guilty,” Alec said, shooting Walsh a look that told her to stay quiet. “I understand if Walsh isn’t being... sensitive in her inquiries, but we need to know everything that could be used against you if we’re going to prove you aren’t the person who did this.”

“And _I’m_ telling you that it was an amicable divorce and that my wife decided that she’d rather do what was right for both of us, rather than what was advantageous for her career,” Chanda said, eyes staring holes into Alec’s face. He stood very still, his expression hard, but after a moment his expression became almost resigned as he added, “Whoever killed her, they did it because they were worried about her winning election. She had a lot of opinions that weren’t popular with a lot of powerful people, and the polls were saying she was going to win by a landslide. They probably took one look at me and assumed her death would be easy to pin on me.”

Walsh examined him closely and then concluded that, while Chanda was still hiding something from her, it wasn’t homicide, and continuing her line of questioning would not be fruitful and only make him less prone to trusting them. She nodded sharply and left the office.

Eli watched her go and sighed- some days playing social cleanup for Walsh could get really annoying.

“Sorry about her. I swear, we really do believe you’re innocent,” he said to Chanda, and then quickly followed after Walsh.

“If you can think of anything that might be useful for us to know- particular political enemies of Lydia or the like, please contact us. Here’s my card,” Alec said, and left the card on the table when it was clear that Chanda wasn’t going to make a move to take the card.

As he left the office, Alec could feel the heavy weight of Chanda’s eyes on his back and held back a shiver.

“Well,” Alec said as they left the gym. “I’m not so sure that guy’s innocent.”

Eli gave him a flat look. “What, so he murdered his wife and then purposefully planted evidence to make himself look like the murderer?” He asked as they climbed into a cab. “Because that is easily the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I used to live in a building haunted by Banana Jones.”

Alec rolled his eyes and said, exasperation evident in his voice, “No, but that was a man being accused of murder by the police and we show up saying we believe him when he says he’s innocent. Normally that would make someone incredibly cooperative with us, if only to prove their innocence. That guy was only slightly less of a stonewall when we told him we didn’t agree with the police.”

“Well spotted,” Walsh said with a nod. “He is hiding something, but I doubt it’s murder.”

“I mean, he could just not trust us,” Eli pointed out. “Three strangers just showed up at his workplace and were like ‘hey buddy we totally believe you when you say you didn’t shoot your wife! Tell us all your secrets!’ It might seem a little too convenient to him.”

Eli grinned when Alec didn’t have anything to retort back- he was totally right, and Alec new it. Even if it meant their best resource was going to be about as useful as a concrete lifejacket. Sometimes being right sucked.

 “So, what’s next?” Alec asked Walsh. “We didn’t get any suspects from what Chanda told us.”

“It’s time to take a closer look at Ms. Fukui’s political agenda,” Walsh said.

Eli barely held back a sigh- that could mean only one thing. Talking to politicians. Ugh.

~

They were into hour one million of the arduous process of weeding through the many political enemies and adversaries Lydia Fukui had picked up during her career and there was a distressing number of names left to go through. Well, for Eli to go through. Alec had long since abandoned him to go do something in the kitchen, and Walsh was doing the much more interesting job of going through the file they’d gotten from the police.

“Anything interesting?” Eli asked, slumping on the couch. He was supposed to be calling some of Ms. Fukui’s opponents to carefully ask them if they’d had Ms. Fukui murdered, but he was procrastinating because he honestly would rather go for a swim with a live shark. It would be less stressful.

“There was a break-in six months ago,” Walsh said, flicking through the file. “The intruder tripped the silent alarm getting into the house. By the time Officer Skalicky and Officer Brant arrived at the scene, they found Ms. Fukui holding the intruder at gunpoint waiting for them to arrive.”

“And what happened to the intruder?” Eli asked with a faint spark of hope. If the intruder had been taken off the hook, they might have found their killer- or at least a man paid to kill Ms. Fukui.

“He was charged with breaking and entering, and, due to several outstanding warrants out for his arrest, he’s still in jail.”

“Darn,” Eli said, and then felt like an absolute shitheel because a part of him had been disappointed that a criminal had been arrested for a crime, just because it would have made their case simpler to solve. He sometimes worried about what his job was doing to him.

“It does raise the question of how the killer got into Fukui’s house without setting the alarm off last night,” Alec pointed out from the kitchen. “Since it was the housekeeper that found her this morning. The killer must have known how to disable the alarm.”

“Which means the killer is close to Ms. Fukui, close enough to know the code to get into her house. That alarm system is one of the most expensive ones on the market, it doesn’t seem likely that the killer would be able to disable it,” Eli added, and mentally started trying to make a list of anyone who’d know how to disarm the alarm system. Unfortunately, that put Chanda Chlebek at the top of the list.

Walsh shook her head, still reading the file. “No. The housekeeper told the police that Fukui only set the alarm right before she went to bed. The alarm wouldn’t have been armed when the killer broke in.”

“Well, there’s that lead down the toilet,” Eli said despondently, and picked up his phone with a sigh. He had politicians to offend.

~

Walsh eyed the slowly dwindling list of known political associates of Lydia Fukui. She and her assistants had gone through the bulk of it the past days, without much to show for it. It was aggravating to know that Chanda Chlebek was holding back important information from the investigation, but she knew better than to try and shake it out of him so early on. It was a matter that would require patience. Something that she was sorely lacking. Especially when she still had another ten politicians to carefully question without allowing them to grow overly suspicious.

Thankfully, she was given a respite in the form of her cell phone ringing.

She eyed the number displayed on the screen- she didn’t recognize it, though it was clearly a local number. “Walsh,” she said, deciding to answer.

“Ms. Walsh? This is Officer Skalicky, I’m one of Captain Ye’s new officers,” the woman on the other end said. Walsh recognized the voice as belonging to the female officer with the doe eyes. Interesting.

“I presume you didn’t call me just to introduce yourself, so get to the point. I’m rather busy,” she said, unwilling to waste any more time. People we so obnoxiously roundabout with their pleasantries on the phone.

“We’ve found some interesting evidence, Captain Ye suggested we tell you about it- though the District Commissioner isn’t happy that you’re involved in this case,” Skalicky said, lowering her voice as if she were worried about being overheard.

“And?” Walsh prompted, beginning to grow irritated.

“We found Mrs. Fukui’s cellphone, left outside her home, likely let by the killer. There weren’t any fingerprints, but there was a message from a man that appears to have been her lover. It was left at ten pm, before the estimated time of death. We traced the call to a man named Giovanni Quinn. He might be the suspect, he was very aggressive in the message,” Skalicky said. On the other end of the line there was a shuffling noise and indecipherable raised voices, someone was clearly displeased about something.

“I’ll need to hear the message myself,” Walsh said, but at the same time, Skalicky hissed, “Sorry, gotta go!”

Walsh glowered at her phone, the screen showing that Skalicky had ended the call.

It appeared she needed to have a chat with Giovanni Quinn and find out if the police had actually found a new suspect.


	2. Chapter 2

Walsh and Alec were at their usual table in The Jade Dragon. Eli resisted the urge to duck back into the kitchen and escape through the side door there. He only had a single hour left in his shift, and it had been going as well as could be expected- a few decent tips, no aggressively obnoxious customers, no complaints about the food. All he’d wanted was to finish his shift in peace and go home, maybe think about the case, but _at home_ and not at work, where he was already seen as the weird guy too closely associated with murder for comfort.

“For the love of god,” he hissed under his breath, still maintaining a customer service smile. He was grinding his teeth by the time he reached the table.

“We have another lead,” Walsh said, like she didn’t notice Eli’s irritation. In reality, it was much worse: she noticed, but didn’t see how it mattered.

“I tried to convince her to wait another hour,” Alec said, expression resigned. “But she wouldn’t be convinced.”

“Why do you do this to me?” Eli whined as he dropped menus on their table.

He retreated, and was given a short respite while he refilled water glasses at one of his other tables, but he had to return in order to pretend to take Walsh and Alec’s orders.

“Mrs. Fukui had a lover- Giovanni Quinn,” Walsh said while Eli wrote down their usual orders on his note pad. “Apparently he was upset with her and left an aggressive message on her phone, though I’ve yet to hear it.”

“Police won’t give it to us: Ye’s hands are tied and the Commissioner’s spooked everyone into keeping their mouths shut,” Alec explained and then added, slightly louder, “And I’d like an order of spring rolls.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a doctor? Those things are bad for you,” Eli said, and then noticed that his shift supervisor was lurking a few tables away and giving him a _look_.

“Just because I know something is bad for your health doesn’t change anything,” Alec retorted and handed his menu back.

They hung around for the rest of Eli’s shift, much to his shift supervisor’s obvious annoyance.

“Don’t make this a habit, Doyle,” she said once his shift ended and Walsh and Alec had disappeared outside to wait for him. She was nineteen years old, rarely did anything other than hover unpleasantly over the other employees, and was either the daughter or niece of the man who owned the restaurant. It was galling to know that a single word from this teenager could be enough to cost Eli his job. Luckily, he’d come prepared for dealing with her, as usual.

“They left a two hundred dollar tip,” Eli said and shrugged his coat on. All employees shared tips and the two of them were the only wait staff working that shift.

“I have suddenly changed my mind,” she said.

“Thought you might,” Eli said and left the restaurant.

Outside, Walsh was nowhere to be seen, but Alec was lurking a few feet away from the employee’s entrance, glowering at his phone.

Having only slightly more social graces than Walsh, Eli immediately tried to peer over his shoulder, but he did at least feel a little bad about it.

“Mother is now attempting to bribe me into going to the gala,” Alec said, rolling his eyes at Eli’s antics and tucked his phone away.

“What, is she going to buy you a pony?” Eli asked, looking around for Walsh. He spotted her partway down the block, her phone to her ear, an unusually soft expression on her face. She must have been talking to Dr. Mullins. Or her husband, Raul Mullins. Eli still had no idea what was going on there, and he was kind of sure he didn’t actually want to know.

“No, she’s offered to fly me to Fiji for a two week vacation,” Alec said. He sounded offhand, like an extended tropical vacation was a reasonable thing for a parent to offer in return for going to a single event.

“Do not leave me here alone,” Eli said, clutching at Alec’s coat sleeve desperately. “I’d do something stupid like try to murder Walsh when she inevitably gets bored without you and starts showing up at all of my shifts to talk about decomposing bodies or something.”

“Believe me, there’s nothing mother could offer me that would convince me to spend any amount of time around Ashley Abrams,” Alec said dryly. “Knowing my mother, by the time dinner was over everyone there would think we were engaged.”

Walsh hung up her phone and headed back to them, her usual cool expression back in place.

“Eli,” she said once she was closer. “Finally.”

“Sorry to bother you with my annoying normal person job,” Eli grumbled, but Walsh either didn’t hear him or didn’t deign it worthy of a response, and predictably, a cab appeared like she’d mentally summoned it. Eli had no idea how she always seemed to know how to perfectly time getting one of those.

The cab rolled up in front of Giovanni Quinn’s home, which appeared to be an ordinary brownstone and was located in a relatively ordinary part of town, slightly upscale but not outrageously so. It didn’t seem like it could be housing a murderer, but Eli had long ago realized that murderers could come in all shapes and sizes. Or type of home.

There was no answer when Alec knocked, or when Walsh held the doorbell down for a solid thirty seconds. Walsh eyed the door, then went and knocked on the door of the neighbour’s door.

There was a muffled curse, a thump, and then an elderly woman opened the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing them cautiously. “I’m not interested in buying anything,” she added.

“We aren’t selling anything,” Alec said quickly, before Walsh could immediately ask her if she thought her neighbour was a murderer. “We’re looking for Giovanni Quinn.”

“Oh, Gio,” the woman said, smiling warmly. “Such a nice young man. I haven’t seen him in a few days- he left in quite a huff and hasn’t been back yet.”

“Which day was that?” Eli asked.

“Oh, the seventeenth, I think. It was around ten, I remember because I’d gotten up to call my sister- she’s twelve hours ahead, you see- and I heard him shouting and slamming doors and such. He was making a real racket, I could hardly hear a thing Susan said,” the woman said with a small disapproving frown.

“Was that sort of thing normal for him?” Alec asked, jotting everything down rapidly.

“Not precisely, he kept funny hours, for an office worker, but he’s always been a good neighbour,” she said and then paused, and asked, expression growing concerned, “Why are you looking for him, exactly? He’s not in any sort of trouble, is he? He wouldn’t harm a fly.”

Walsh was exactly the sort of person to tell an old lady her neighbour was a suspect in a murder investigation just to see how she’d react, so Eli quickly hedged, saying, “A friend of his died earlier this week, so we need to contact him.”

“If he comes home, you can call me at this number,” Alec said and handed the woman a card.

They caught another cab back to Walsh’s home, though part of Eli wished he could go home and wash the smell of fake Chinese food off his skin. A greater part of him wanted to comb through his photos of the crime scene to look for more clues. Walsh was a terrible influence.

“Well that wasn’t terribly useful,” Alec drawled, flipping through his notes.

“Gio could be the killer,” Eli pointed out. “We know he wasn’t at home at the time of the murder, and it’s a bit suspicious that he hasn’t come back since. Especially if he was arguing with Ms. Fukui that night.”

“I need to hear that message or speak to Quinn directly before I make any assumptions,” Walsh said eyes distant, “But I wouldn’t be hasty in assuming his guilt. Fukui and Chlebek were already getting a divorce- what would drive Quinn to kill Fukui when she’s leaving her husband, possibly for Quinn’s sake?”

“People do plenty of incomprehensible things when it comes to affairs,” Eli said with a shrug, but had to agree with Walsh. It was impossible to come to any sort of conclusion about Quinn without having spoken to him, or at least having heard the message on Ms. Fukui’s phone. Speaking of... “So, next stop is the police station to wrangle that message out of Ye, right?”

Before Walsh could reply, Alec’s phone rang.

He pulled it out and looked at the number, eyebrows raising in surprise. “This is Alec Barrington-Johnsen,” he said. He listened for a moment, then said to Walsh and Eli, looking even more surprised, “It’s Chlebek. He’s been arrested.”

~

Captain Ye was waiting for them outside the precinct, looking even less impressed with the world than usual. He held a slowly burning cigarette in one hand, but didn’t bring it up to his lips.

“Captain,” Walsh said, surprised to find him outside. It wasn’t the first time she and her assistants had been called down by someone under arrest, but normally Ye would speak with them inside right before they were allowed to see whoever was under arrest. Departure from routine signified something else was afoot.

“Just out for a smoke break, things are rather tense inside and I needed some air,” Ye said. Walsh knew for a fact the man didn’t smoke, but pretended he did for instances such as this, when he needed an excuse to be away from the office without scrutiny. “The commissioner himself has a particular interest in this investigation,” Ye continued. He was surprisingly good at faking a casual tone. “He’s been dropping by frequently since Ms. Fukui was discovered, and it was under his orders that Mr. Chlebek was arrested.”

“You don’t agree with him?” Walsh asked, not missing the narrow look Ye shot at the doors to the precinct.

For all that she’d once been a police officer and still spent a significant amount of time around criminals and the police force, she’d yet to actually meet the commissioner. That hardly mattered- it was common, albeit unspoken, knowledge that he was on the take for every important criminal organization in the city. The fact that he was the one to move to have Chlebek arrested certainly seemed significant, and added credence to her suspicion that Chlebek was merely the scapegoat for someone much more dangerous.

Ye snorted, tacitly agreeing with all that she hadn’t said. “I’m sure the commissioner has his reasons,” he said blandly. “I just feel we might have made a move too soon; the evidence we have against Mr. Chlebek for the homicide isn’t airtight. I also haven’t seen the evidence showing him kidnapping Mr. Quinn, which he has also been charged with.”

Walsh raised her eyebrows. “There was evidence of them having known about each other?” She hated how little she really knew about Quinn- she’d only learned of his existence earlier that morning and hadn’t yet had a chance to do any digging, leaving her in the unusual position of knowing less than the police did. It wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed, especially when she suspected that Quinn was at the heart of the whole convoluted mess.

“Phone records show that they frequently called each other, and Chlebek made frequent purchases at a gas station close to Quinn’s home, despite living on the opposite side of town.”

Walsh’s suspicion piqued. That was not behavior one expected from a cuckold husband and his wife’s lover. It was also exceptionally tenuous evidence of being guilty of kidnapping, even if one took into account the tangled infidelity of the three people involved.

“That’s certainly not enough to justify assuming Chlebek is the kidnapper,” she pointed out casually. There had to be more. Even if Chlebek was being framed, they had to have _something_ they were using, since not every person in the judicial system and media could be bought. Ye was eyeing the entrance to the station even more warily. He likely was running out of time to be away from the precinct without anyone questioning it.

“The commissioner said that Chlebek left several suspicious messages on Quinn’s phone,” Ye said. His mouth quirked up in the wry smile Walsh recalled seeing whenever the pair of them had run headfirst into the stranglehold that the mob had over the police force’s senior management. “Unfortunately, after the messages were passed onto the forensic linguist out of town, there was a computer error and the original copies were lost.”

“How unfortunate,” Walsh remarked, barely keeping the irritation she wanted to express in check.

“These things happen,” Ye said with a shrug that said he thought these things happened a little too often in Summerport. He stubbed the half-burnt cigarette out on the heel of his shoe and tossed it in the trash. “Well, thanks for keeping me company out here, Walsh. I’ll see you inside.” He was halfway to the front entrance when he paused and looked back at her and added, “Oh, and I might not see you at the pub next week, the Commissioner wants me to spend some time at the main office, clearing up a few loose ends.”

Walsh nodded agreeably enough. She never associated with Ye outside of a case, much less at a pub. Being temporarily under the direct eye of the Commissioner’s office could only mean one thing: she couldn’t rely on Ye for any more information for this case.

Ye entered the building and Walsh allowed herself a small snort of amusement. For all that she accused Ye and his force of being incompetent, he was a lot more intelligent than she often gave him credit for. She wouldn’t waste all that he’d told her.

~

Hushed whispers followed the three of them as they walked through the precinct to where Chanda Chlebek was being held. Walsh paid them no mind, but Eli struggled not to narrow his eyes at the cops following their path inside. He knew the majority of them were on the take, but it was still unnerving to be under such scrutiny.

Walsh was allowed into see Chanda by one of the junior officers, as Chanda’s legal counsel.

“What about these two?” the officer asked, stopping Alec and Eli from following after her.

“My assistants are necessary and have the required credentials,” Walsh said irritably.

Which was patently untrue, Eli reflected. He had half a paralegal certificate, which meant nothing, and Alec didn’t even have that. Luckily, most of the officers knew better than to tangle with Walsh, since it made life less messy.

“Take it up with Ye,” Alec said and ducked under the officer’s arm, dragging Eli with him. The officer frowned, but didn’t stop them.

Chanda was a wreck inside the interrogation room. His shoulders were hunched and his eyes wide and frightened, though he looked marginally calmer once he saw Walsh.

“I didn’t kidnap anyone,” he said the moment the door was closed behind Eli.

“Obviously,” Walsh said, ruthlessly cutting Chanda off. “We wouldn’t be in this room if we thought you had kidnapped Giovanni Quinn. What I need to know is why anyone wants us to believe that you did.”

Chanda’s eyes flickered to the one-way mirror on the far wall, then back to Walsh. The message was clear. There were some things that couldn’t be said in front of the police, especially with the commissioner and his men sniffing around.

Walsh frowned and then nodded at Eli, who sighed, but stepped forward to do what Walsh was wordlessly asking him to do. It might have been necessary, but there was something deeply humiliating about acting like a complete idiot in front of the police.

“Oh, looks like you could use some more water,” Eli said and winked as he reached across Chanda to grab his half-empty cup of water. The position made it look like he was being a brainless flirt for anyone watching through the mirror, but blocked Chanda’s face temporarily.

It also put Eli’s ear close enough to hear Chanda just barely breath, “Saul Casale.”

Eli twitched his head in the smallest possible nod and stepped back.

The rest of their time with Chanda was largely unproductive: Chanda had been home alone and had no alibi, he had met Giovanni Quinn before but held no grudge against him, and Quinn definitely hadn’t been Lydia’s lover but they had known each other.

Just as they were gathering their things to leave, Chanda stared hard at Eli, and said, “Please. Find Giovanni Quinn.”

Eli stared back helplessly back. Chanda’s gaze was intense, his eyes were desperate but determined. Eli couldn’t do anything except nod back.

“Interesting,” Walsh murmured, once they were safely outside the precinct.

“What is?” Eli asked curiously.

“Chlebek was telling the truth, Quinn and Fukui were not lovers,” Walsh replied and climbed into the cab that appeared in front of them.

“You mean that wasn’t a man lying about not knowing about knowing about his wife’s infidelity?” Alec asked, looking skeptical. “It would make sense for him to not want to admit to knowing about that, it would give him motive for kidnapping Quinn, even if we know he’s innocent.”

“Chanda didn’t exactly talk about Quinn like he was hiding a lot of resentment,” Eli pointed out. He could see where Walsh was coming from- even if Chanda were an amazing actor, it would be hard to fake the casual way he talked about Quinn. But there had been something in his eyes...

“I suspect Chlebek and Quinn are lovers,” Walsh announced calmly.

“Chanda and Quinn?!” Alec asked, floored. “Where do you get _that_? Not being jealous doesn’t exactly spell boyfriends.”

“It makes a sort of sense,” Eli said slowly, lost in thought. “What? It does!” He defended when Alec shot him a disbelieving look.

“Alright, Daphne, amaze me with your deductive reasoning based off of nothing,” Alec said with an infuriating smirk.

Eli bristled like a cat brushed the wrong way, but he took the time to start thinking out loud. “Okay, well despite what Chanda said, he and Ms. Fukui getting a divorce _right before_ her election doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if their only reason was that it ‘wasn’t working out’- it would be safer to just continue to live separately and divorce after she won the election.”

Through the rearview mirror, Eli could see Walsh watching him closely from the front seat. Her eyes didn’t give anything away, but she wasn’t stopping Eli, so he figured that he had to be onto _something_ , so he continued, “But if Chanda was seeing someone else- a _male_ someone else- Ms. Fukui probably wouldn’t want to risk the potential scandal of having a gay husband, so getting a divorce would make sense.”

“Why would Chanda have married her in the first place if he’s gay?” Alec asked doubtfully, though his expression was thoughtful.

“Chanda’s an MMA fighter,” Eli pointed out.

“Your detective skills are astounding, Eliot. I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out,” Alec drawled, and dodged the smack Eli aimed at his head.

From the front seat, Walsh rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, but competitive sports are still pretty homophobic, especially when you go pro,” Eli said. He’d dealt with plenty of shit when he was playing baseball in middle school- he could only imagine what it would be like as an adult and in a sport that involved wearing next to no clothing and climbing all over each other and pinning each other on the ground. “And I’m willing to bet that MMA fighting is even worse than other sports. Being married would have been useful for both of them.”

Alec hummed thoughtfully, accepting Eli’s point with about as much grace as could be expected. “I suppose if Chanda met someone else he’d want to get a divorce fairly quickly, provided it also benefited Ms. Fukui, which would explain why he was the one to file the divorce,” Alec conceded. “But we have no way of knowing if this is pure speculation or not without asking Chanda directly, which he can’t answer anyways while he’s in the precinct.”

“While we cannot confirm this, I suspect it’s correct given the way Chlebek spoke about Quinn,” Walsh said from the front seat.

“What do you mean?” Eli asked, because as much as he thought he was right, he also had to agree with Alec- they couldn’t confirm his hypothesis until Chanda was out from under the commissioner’s thumb. “He didn’t really seem to have any sort of feelings about Quinn, positive or negative.”

“Chlebek does seem to be an excellent actor, to be expected from a closeted man in an exceptionally homophobic work environment, but he appeared very concerned about the fact that Quinn is missing. And there is the matter of what he said when we left the interrogation room,” Walsh said.

“‘Find Giovanni Quinn’,” Eli repeated, eyes widening. He’d assumed Chanda had said it because it would prove his innocence, but if he was romantically involved with Quinn... Well, he’d want him found for other reasons too.

“What did Chlebek tell you while you were pretending to be a fool?” Walsh asked.

“He said ‘Saul Casale’,” Eli reported, frowning. “Do you recognize that name? Because I sure don’t.”

Alec frowned. “It sounds familiar, but I have no idea where from.”

 Walsh mentally sorted through her index of Summerport’s criminals capable of murder, but came up short. Of course, it was entirely possible that ‘Saul Casale’ was merely an alias, or was a small-time criminal who had yet to put himself onto Walsh’s radar- the possibilities were endless given their lack of solid information. Walsh tried to reign in her frustration, but it had been a long time since a case had been so ephemeral in its details. Nevertheless, she was a professional and had many years’ experience dealing with Summerport’s secretive underbelly, so by the time they entered her apartment, she had collected herself.

They arrived back at Walsh’s apartment in mutual silence, all three lost in their musings.

“Let us go over the facts,” Walsh said, once they were all settled. She might have been a genius, but she knew her own failings, and as much as she hated to admit it, she might have missed something in this tangled web of half-truths and speculation.

Alec and Eli obligingly ended whatever squabble they’d been having, and Eli pulled out the small white board they used for such instances.

“Lydia Fukui, who was a senator candidate, was murdered four days ago,” Walsh said, writing this information down at the center of the board. “What motives would someone have to kill her?” she asked Eli, not because she couldn’t think of any, but because Eli needed more practice on this sort of thing.

Eli frowned and tapped a finger to his chin thoughtfully. “Well, it’s either personal or political,” he said. “I’m leaning towards political, since the crime was made to look like it was personally motivated.”

“It could be both, killing two birds with one stone,” Alec mused from where he on the couch behind Walsh and Eli. They both turned from the white board to look at Alec. Walsh’s eyebrow ticked up as if to say ‘elaborate’, so Alec continued, “What if there’s someone who would benefit from having her not get the senate seat, _and_ who also has a grudge against Ms. Fukui? Or Chanda for that matter, since he was the one the suspect tried to frame for murder. But that’s all speculation, so it doesn’t really matter at this point.”

“Okay, so realistically, we don’t have any solid evidence on why Ms. Fukui was killed,” Eli said and put a question mark next to the word ‘motive’ under her name. “But we do know that the killer did a bad job of framing her husband Chanda Chlebek.”

“It’s common knowledge that Chlebek and Fukui were married, given their public statuses,” Walsh said, eyes narrowing. “But knowledge that they were getting divorced wasn’t known to many.”

Eli’s eyes widened, and he said, “Yeah, how exactly did the killer find those divorce papers? I doubt they just happened to be out on Ms. Fukui’s desk, and the killer decided to throw it in. They had to have brought them to the crime scene on purpose.”

“A gun was also taken from her safe,” Alec pointed out, and then asked thoughtfully, “Did we ever see the ballistics report?”

“The bullet that killed Fukui matches the caliber of gun that was registered under Fukui’s name, but the gun itself was never recovered,” Walsh said. “The killer had to have known that Fukui had a gun, and how to get into the safe. This, along with knowledge of a divorce, suggests a personal connection, if not a personal motive to kill Fukui.”

“That’s not even including Giovanni Quinn or whoever Saul Casale is,” Eli said, and added their names to the already tangled web he’d been drawing on the white board. Saul Casale’s name was accompanied by several question marks and a small frowning face. “Gio disappeared _after_ Ms. Fukui was killed and Chanda is the prime suspect again. What if Chanda’s the main target here, not Ms. Fukui?”

Walsh considered this, but quickly came to the conclusion that it didn’t fit quite right. “If Chlebek were the target, I suspect the killer would be more thorough on making sure he appeared indisputably to be the culprit. The reason he’s a suspect in Quinn’s disappearance isn’t due to poorly placed evidence, and more due to the involvement of the police. That suggests someone is trying very hard to convince us that Chlebek is guilty.”

Alec rolled his eyes as Eli and Walsh descended into an argument over whether Chlebek or Fukui was the main target and got up to make dinner. Both of his companions were too focused on their case to remember that human beings needed three meals a day, but Alec wasn’t about to let them get away with skipping dinner again.

Thirty minutes later, pasta in hand, Alec came back to the living room to turn on the news. Walsh and Eli were still at it- though Alec thought it sounded like their argument had shifted subjects to the subject of the elusive Saul Casale. 

He was halfway through his plate of pasta when something on the news caught his eye and he swore loudly, distracting both Eli and Walsh from their argument.

“I think I may have figured out Saul Casale’s connection,” he said before they could do more than turn to stare at him. His expression was grim as he grabbed the TV remote and turned it up so it was more than just background noise.

“-leaves us wondering what will become of the many political positions Ms. Fukui was championing,” The news anchor was saying. “One such position was her hard stance on the strict prohibition of the drug Luminex, commonly as prescription pain medication, but which has frequently been found mixed in other illegal substances. Ms. Fukui’s top contender for the senate seat, Mr. Brown, has gone on record saying that such a prohibition would do more harm than good. With Ms. Fukui no longer in a position to drive her prohibition forward, it seems that Luminex will remain largely unregulated and available to the public. Good news for businessmen like CEO and owner of Tessaro Pharmaceuticals, Luvardo Tessaro- Summerport’s own billionaire-”

Alec hit the mute button on the TV, abruptly cutting off the news anchor, and turned to face Walsh and Eli, a weary look on his face.

“I remembered where I heard Saul Casale’s name before. I’ve met him before at an event I attended with my parents, years ago,” he explained and sat down at the kitchen table, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’s Luvardo Tessaro’s ‘personal assistant’.” Here Alec rolled his eyes at the words ‘personal assistant’, a wry smile flitting briefly across his face. Eli knew exactly what sort of assistant Saul Casale likely was, and it likely involved far more bullet shells than coffee runs.

“Casale was always at Tessaro’s side,” Alec continued, “But he rarely spoke or even gave anyone his name. It wasn’t that noticeable, most people like my parents don’t even take note of PAs and the like. I probably saw him a half dozen times, but he was so forgettable that the only reason I remembered him was because the last time I saw him, years ago- Tessaro was yelling at him in the hallway outside a Gala and I felt embarrassed for Casale. He was just that unremarkable.”

“Makes sense if you’re a mob boss’s trained dog,” Eli remarked, scowling at the TV, which had by then finished its segment on Lydia Fukui. “So, Tessaro had Lydia taken out so he didn’t have to worry about her prohibition while also giving to the senate seat to someone he could more easily manipulate?” Eli asked Walsh, starting to see how the parts fit together, though they didn’t come together perfectly. He just _knew_ he was missing something important. “And then he had Chanda framed for her death... Framed badly. You’d think a bigshot crime guy could do a better job at that sort of thing.”

“Exactly,” Walsh said, having reached the same conclusion the moment Tessaro’s name had come up. “Tessaro wouldn’t have made the mistakes I found immediately at the crime scene.”

“But who else would want to prevent the prohibition on Luminex?” Eli asked and scratched his head quizzically. “Another drug company?”

Alec shook his head. “No, Luminex is patented, it’s Tessaro’s main money maker.”

“Chlebek gave you Saul Casale’s name specifically,” Walsh said. “He must be involved some way, and not just as Tessaro’s employee.”

“So, we’ve got a pharmaceutical company drug lord slash CEO’s enforcer, who killed a senator candidate, and who did a bad job at framing her possibly gay husband, and we don’t know why,” Eli concluded. He looked to Alec and said wryly, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel even more confused than ever.”

“The problem will be getting close to Tessaro and thus Casale,” Walsh said, ignoring Eli, as she often did whenever he said something she found especially nonsensical.

“I’m guessing we can’t just go up to either of them and say ‘hey did either of you kill Lydia Fukui and kidnap her husband’s boyfriend’?” Eli asked.

Walsh didn’t roll her eyes but she did shoot Eli a narrow look that said she did not appreciate his shallow attempt at humour. “No, none of us would even be able to get close enough to say so much as a hello. The three of us have gained a certain… notoriety within men like Tessaro’s circle.”

Alec sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose again. “I might have a way to overcome that obstacle. But I don’t like it,” he said, voice tight, like the words were being forced out of him.

“Does it involve dogs?” Eli asked, remembering Alec’s near comical aversion to man’s best friend. That had certainly been a fun case.

“No,” Alec snapped, glowering at Eli.

Eli beamed back unrepentantly, but he did casually step out of reach. Just in case.

“Worse,” Alec said darkly. “It involves my parents.”


	3. Chapter 3

“What I don’t understand is why Walsh can’t go with you,” Eli complained.

Alec didn’t respond, mostly because Eli had been whining for a solid hour on the subject and Alec wasn’t inclined to repeat himself. They both knew that Walsh being at this sort of event would result end in nothing less than a catastrophe, possibly even before they managed to corner Tessaro or Casale.

Instead of saying any of that, Alec scrolled through his phone and didn’t even look up, just to rile Eli up a little more, and he continued to pretend to not notice the outraged looks Eli was shooting him through the mirror.

“At least Walsh would look sort of dapper in this kind of thing, I’m just going to look like a toddler someone forced into a rented suit for a wedding or something,” Eli continued, and then froze when one of the tailors started using several _very_ sharp pins far too close to a rather sensitive part of his body.

Alec very much doubted that Eli would look that terrible in a suit, last minute though it was. But he wasn’t about to indulge in Eli’s pity party, so he said instead, “Quit whining, _I_ have to go to the gala my mother has been hounding me about, and after I’ve refused every invitation to every event she’s tried to drag me to for the last five years.”

Eli tilted his head thoughtfully and flinched when this earned him a sharp poke from one of the pins. He hadn’t even _moved_ his legs; that _had_ to have been on purpose. But you didn’t argue with men holding sharp objects near your family jewels.

“Okay, you win: this sucks more for you than me,” Eli said, once he was finished swearing silently.

“This will be ready for this evening, correct?” Alec asked one of the tailors, not seeming to care that one of them had nearly emasculated Eli with a sewing pin.

Sometimes Eli sincerely hated him from the bottom of his heart.

The tailor shot Alec a deeply offended look and said, “Of course it will be, Mr. Barrington-Johnsen.”

Alec ignored the face Eli made at him. He knew how ridiculous his last name sounded- he’d spent more than half his life wincing whenever anyone used it. It was only after he’d been dragged into Walsh’s insane little world that he’d found himself unable to continue to give a shit.  It was hard to care about something so asinine as his ridiculous last name when his life regularly involved gun fights, corpses, and exceptionally convoluted schemes.

The tailor finished up and then left the room, instructing Eli to leave the suit ready to be altered on the side table. Eli looked down at the suit he was wearing with a look of apprehension. There were _a lot_ of pins.

“Okay, so, What’s our game plan?” Eli asked, expression mildly apprehensive as he attempted to get the jacket off without accidentally stabbing himself or dislodging any pins.

Alec raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean? We go to the gala and we don’t get thrown out since neither of us is Walsh, then we find a way to talk to Tessaro or his assistant. Without starting a gang war, since, again, we are not Walsh.”

“Yeah, I knew that much,” Eli said, a touch irritably, jacket halfway off his shoulders. He hesitated and then blurted, “I meant about us. Am I pretending to be your boyfriend or am I just going as your entirely-platonic-and-straight-plus-one?”

“Huh.” Alec hadn’t really considered that part, having been more preoccupied with making sure Eli wasn’t going to show up in worn out sweatpants and a band t-shirt.

“I don’t really care either way,” Eli said with a shrug and winced when this caused one of the pins to gently stab him. “I just figured I should offer- it would give you an excuse to avoid Ashley Adams or whatever her name was.”

Immediately, Alec liked this plan.

“It’s Ashley Abrams, and this sounds like an excellent plan,” Alec said absently, already imagining the outraged faces his parents would make at him. He was nearly thirty years old, but he had figured out years ago that he wasn’t ever really going to fully outgrow his teenage desire to do whatever he could to piss his parents off. He’d already accepted this fact about himself and he tried to only indulge in it when there was a _real_ payoff. And this would be one hell of a payoff.

“Cool, sounds good, Velma,” Eli said and winked at Alec through the mirror. Alec was pretty sure that if he hadn’t been trapped in a suit jacket full of sewing pins, Eli would have done the double finger gun pose, revealing what a total dork he was, even while wearing a suit worth several hundred dollars.

Abruptly, Alec realized that while in theory this plan was gold, it would involve pretending to date _Eli_. He was much less certain this was a good idea.

What had he done?

~

“Okay, no haring off after the bad guy just because you think you have everything figured out this time,” Alec said sternly as they entered the gala.

His mother had almost cried with happiness when Alec had called her to tell her that he was coming after all, and she’d _actually_ cried when Alec had told her he was bringing a plus one. He had failed to mention that his plus one was a) a man and b) Eli, whom she had met once very briefly, and with whom she had been less than impressed by. In Eli’s defense, at the time he’d been covered in mud, and it would have been tough for anyone to make a good impression, much less a man with a concussion and nearing hypothermia from a dunk in the polluted river that ran around the edge of Summerport.

“That was one time!” Eli protested, loud enough to attract the attention of several people ahead of them waiting to be admitted to the ballroom.

Alec gave him a flat stare.

“Okay, a couple times,” Eli amended sheepishly. “But it’s always worked out for the best, hasn’t it?”

“You got _shot_ last time.”

“You were the one who told me to quit being a baby since it was only a graze!”

And Alec had said that because he hadn’t known what else to do with the sheer panic seeing Eli bleeding had caused him, he reflected dourly and handed his invitation to the woman guarding the doors of the ballroom.

“Just don’t get kidnapped again, Daphne,” Alec grumbled and stormed off to get a drink. He got two steps before he realized this would mean leaving Eli unsupervised and turned on his heel to drag Eli along with him.

They got drinks at the bar- nonalcoholic since being drunk and talking to a drug lord about murder did not mix well- and surveyed the room. It was sumptuously decorated in silver and navy blue with an enormous chandelier dripping with what might have been actual diamonds. In one corner, a string quartet had started to play, though no one would start to dance for at least another hour, once people were finished arriving. Waiters in immaculate black and white uniforms glided unobtrusively through the crowd, carrying enormous platters of appetizers that always tasted bland no matter how expensive they were.

It was probably the last place Alec wanted to be, second only to the inside of an active volcano.

“Is Tessaro here yet?” Eli asked, casually looking around the room, though he only had the vaguest idea of what Tessaro looked like: mid-fifties, Italian, very tall.

The gala was far from full swing, the ballroom mostly empty while people trickled in through the main doors.

“Yes,” Alec said, nodding towards where their target was socializing with several older ladies, and then he had to grab Eli’s arm before he went charging off. “But we aren’t going to go march up to him and demand to know if he’s recently had a woman killed!”

Eli rolled his eyes. “I _was_ going to start with ‘hello’, give me at least a _little_ credit.”

“If we accost him right away, he’ll be suspicious,” Alec said, and deliberately positioned himself so that his back was to Tessaro while also blocking Eli from sight.

“He’s going to be suspicious no matter when we go up to him,” Eli pointed out, but relaxed back against the bar, Alec’s hand falling from his arm. “Since we’re, you know, still asking him if he had a politician murdered.”

“Well, I was going to start with ‘hello’,” Alec said and easily dodged the swipe Eli leveled at him. “Hey, watch it, we’re supposed to be in love here.”

“Oh, right,” Eli said and patted Alec gingerly on the arm. “Uh, sorry, snugglemuffin.”

“Ugh.” Alec made a face. “Don’t even try. Just be your usual obnoxious self. That will be more convincing.”

“Yeah, I’m really feeling the love here,” Eli said and rolled his eyes again. He peeked around Alec’s broad shoulders, noting that Tessaro was moving farther away from them, one arm slung around a younger blond man’s shoulders. “So, if we aren’t going to go up to Tessaro, how are we going to incept him to come talk to us first?”

“What I was _trying_ to say, is that we just need to wait for him to get a few drinks in before we start interrogating him,” Alec said, and slugged back the rest of his drink, wishing it weren’t just soda.

“What if he doesn’t drink?”

“Believe me, at an event like this, nobody will be leaving here sober,” Alec said wearily.

Eli shot him a doubtful look but shrugged and sipped his own drink. He tugged absently at the cuffs of his jacket, feeling fairly uncomfortable. The suit fit perfectly, much better than the last one Eli had owned in high school when he’d been his older brother’s groomsman, but he just wasn’t used to wearing such slim fitting clothing. Other than his uniform for The Jade Dragon, Eli tended towards baggy t-shirts and hoodies and hand-me down jeans. It was partially due to his own frugality and lack of finances, but mostly his own laziness. The narrow cut of the pants and the sharp taper of the suit jacket felt unfamiliar and strange to him. Stranger still were the split second looks Alec had been shooting him since the moment Eli had changed into the suit. It wasn’t his usual expression of exasperation that he used for Eli or the jaded smirk that he used for everything else, but Eli didn’t know _what_ it was.

But this was hardly the place to be worrying about something so inconsequential. They were there to talk to a drug lord about a murder and a kidnapping. To distract himself, Eli looked around the room, taking in the slowly swelling crowd. They were all obviously rich in their sharply tailored suits and colorful gowns, jewelry dripping from men and women alike. It was like something out of a movie. A couple caught his eye: a short, curvaceous woman with dark eyes and deep brown hair swept into an elegant updo, standing next to a stately gentleman with a familiar looking jawline.

“Hey, Alec, would you describe your father as looking like a middle-aged, blond Pierce Brosnan?” Eli asked, eyeing the couple. They both smiled and greeted people like royalty meeting their subjects, but there was a careful distance between them and neither seemed to acknowledge the other more than strictly necessary.

Alec swore and turned to look in the same direction as Eli. He swore again, hissed curses under his breath in French that sounded nasty, and he said, “Hell. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with them until _after_ we dealt with Tessaro. Maybe if we quickly head over towards the band they won’t notice-”

Even as he said this, Alec’s mother spotted the pair of them and gently touched her husband’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Okay, plan B, direct confrontation,” Eli said, as the couple started weaving their way through the rapidly filling ballroom, heading directly towards the bar where Alec and Eli were stationed.

Alec groaned under his breath and looked at his empty cup like he dearly wished it were full again, and with something stronger than Coke.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how clingy should I be? How pissed off are we aiming to make your parents?” Eli asked. He relaxed further against the bar, until one of his shoulders casually brushed Alec’s.

“Hmm,” Alec said, dark eyes unfathomable as he tracked his approaching parents. “Maybe a 6. Just don’t overdo it: my parents are master bullshit detectors.”

“Got it, snugglemuffin,” Eli said, just to try and make Alec shoot him one last exasperated look before his parents descended upon them.

“Alexander,” Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen said, her voice pleasantly husky. She had no discernable accent, but it didn’t surprise Eli since he remembered Alec mentioning offhand how his mother had chosen to scrub every facet of her birth country from herself once she’d married Alec’s father.

“I’m so pleased you could come after all,” Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen continued. “Have you seen Ashley yet? I saw her talking to Mr. White and-”

“This is Eli,” Alec said, cutting her off with a surprisingly serious expression. “He’s my boyfriend.”

Mr. and Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen stared at Alec and then at Eli blankly for a solid ten seconds.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Eli said, plastering on the sort of smile he knew made him look like a brainless idiot. He extended a hand to Mr. Barrington-Johnson expectantly, smile never wavering when Mr. Barrington-Johnson continued to stare at him and did not take his hand.

A split-second later, Mr. Barrington-Johnson’s ingrained manners seemed to kick in and he shook Eli’s offered hand firmly. “Likewise,” He said, though there was something in his eyes that suggested this was patently untrue.

Eli smiled wider and tried to look even stupider.

“Eli’s why I’m here tonight, he was insistent on meeting both of you,” Alec said and nearly startled Eli out of his own skin when he casually draped an arm around Eli’s back, his hand resting lightly on his hip.

“Is that so,” Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen said, pursing her lips as she eyed Eli up and down. Eli pretended not to notice how her eyes lingered on his untrimmed mop of brown hair or on his ink stained fingers. “You’ll have to forgive our rudeness, Eli. Alexander failed to mention to us that he was seeing someone. How long have you been together?”

Eli and Alec exchanged a look, Alec’s lips twitching slightly in suppressed amusement.

“Oh, we met about seven months ago,” Eli said, completely honest.

“What do you do for a living? Are you a doctor, like our Alexander?” Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen asked, looking faintly doubtful.

Eli took great glee in smiling widely, leaning further into Alec’s side and saying sweetly, “Oh no, I never even finished my degree. I work at a Chinese food restaurant. The Jade Dragon- maybe you’ve heard of it? We serve the best orange chicken in Summerport!”

Alec’s side shook in silent laughter, though Eli wasn’t sure if he was laughing at the idea of The Jade Dragon selling the best of anything or at Eli being a college drop out. Which he was, technically. He’d never finished his criminology degree, having burnt out in his second year. After finishing his bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and computer programming and his master’s in cryptography, of course.

“Is- is that so,” Mrs. Barrington-Johnsen said, sounding a little faint.

“And where precisely did you meet?” Mr. Barrington-Johnsen asked, a faint growl in his voice. He’d given up attempts at being polite and was openly scowling at Eli. Had Eli not intimately familiar with Alec’s own scowl, he might have actually been a bit intimidated. “The result of working for _that_ woman, I expect?” His tone was derisive, and it was clear that he was talking about Walsh.

Alec stiffened and looked like he was about to snap at his father, but Eli beat him to the punch, saying sharply, “Yes. He did. He probably saved my life. You got a problem with that?”

Mr. Barrington-Johnsen barely spared Eli a glance and said to Alec, “Son, we’ve tried to let you choose your own path-”

Alec snorted loudly.

“-but your stubbornness has gone on long enough. Your association with that woman no longer only concerns you, it has been affecting my business relationships.”

“How terrible for you to have difficulty talking to criminals,” Alec drawled, knowing full well the sort of effect that particular tone of voice would have on his father.

“Alexander, you don’t understand the gravity of this situation,” Mr. Barrington-Johnsen said. He didn’t raise his voice, but there was an intensity in his expression that would have made Eli scoot back a step, were he not effectively held in place by Alec’s arm. “You are young and think actions don’t have their consequences, but you must understand how the _people_ you associate will one day come to effect how the world sees you.” As he said the word ‘people’ his eyes flicked to Eli, a small sneer on his face telling Eli _exactly_ who he was talking about, not that it hadn’t been patently obvious.

“And _you_ don’t seem to care that I have no interest in being your dancing monkey,” Alec snapped, his body was as tense as a bow string against Eli’s side.

Before Mr. Barrington-Johnsen could say a word, his face flushed with anger, Alec’s mother quickly intervened, saying, “Alexander, you have to understand that we are simply concerned about your future. Is this nonsense really what you want attached to your name?”

Alec was all but vibrating with rage, but he seemed to have become so angry he was at a loss for words. Eli flicked a quick glance up at him- jaw clenched, neck muscles tense as he bit back the vitriol he wanted to throw back in his mother’s face- and Eli couldn’t help but snap, “Your son has saved more than a few lives, if you think he should reconsider being around me and Walsh, then it’s _you_ who he shouldn’t be associated with!”

Eli’s voice had risen far more than Mr. Barrington-Johnsen or Alec’s, drawing attention from several nearby groups of people, conversation grinding to an abrupt halt.

“Good bye, mother,” Alec managed to get out. He set his jaw and firmly steered Eli away from his parents.

Several people were unsubtly staring at them as they went, having heard Eli’s outburst, though thankfully no one attempted to talk to them. The further away from the bar they got, the fewer people seemed to notice them, until Alec let them stop, almost on the opposite end of the ballroom.

“Let’s dance,” Alec said, spotting the mother of someone he’d gone to high school with. She had a determined look in her eye that Alec didn’t like and she was heading towards them. Eli spluttered as Alec forcibly towed him to the area of the ballroom set aside for actual dancing.

Eli spluttered and tried to dig in his heels. “No way! I can’t dance,” he protested.

Alec looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. “You know how to do so many things and yet you don’t know how to do the easiest dance known to mankind?” He asked and nodded towards the couples all executing a very basic form of the waltz.

“I don’t know how _because_ I know how to do all those things,” Eli grumbled. As a kid he’d been so focused on graduating high school early, and then completing his degrees- who had time for frivolous shit like learning to waltz? There was a reason Alec and Walsh could reasonably be called his first real friends. He might have been a genius, but learning still took a lot of time.

Alec seemed to recall all of this, his sardonic expression gentling into a look of faint amusement. “Well, no time like the present then,” he said, and dragged Eli into the thick of things before he could protest.

“I’m going to look stupid, everyone will be looking at us,” Eli hissed, hating how his pale complexion showed his blush so clearly. You could probably spot his bright red ears from clear across the ballroom.

“Everyone is busy getting drunk and will hardly notice a single idiot making a fool of himself,” Alec corrected lightly. He ignored the irritated look Eli was shooting him, and easily manhandled him into position. “I’ll let you lead this time, since it’s easier,” Alec said, and placed one palm on Eli’s shoulder and grasped Eli’s hand with the other. Even through his new, expensive suit jacket and collared shirt, Eli could feel the warmth of it on his shoulder. Eli’s mouth ticked up when he realized that Alec had said ‘this time’.

It was probably fairly comical looking, given how much taller Alec was and how Eli kept forgetting which direction he was meant to step with which foot, but it was much easier than he’d expected.

“This… isn’t that terrible,” he said after they’d been swaying in place for a few minutes. It really wasn’t. The whole evening should have made it excruciating- the uncomfortable suit, Alec’s parents, and the fact that they were only there to politely interrogate a drug lord. But somehow, standing with his arm around Alec’s waist, hands clasped, their faces angled towards each other, it didn’t seem so bad. In fact…

Alec’s dark gaze flicked from Eli’s face and over his shoulder, and his expression abruptly shuttered, his warm, amused look disappearing entirely. “There’s Tessaro,” he said in an undertone. “Looks like he and Casale are alone. We should try and grab him before anyone else does.”

Eli sighed and nodded, pulling away from Alec. Tessaro was standing several feet away, head bent towards a slighter, blond man, both of their expressions relaxed. Alec lead the way, casually heading towards Tessaro’s corner without making it appear like they were heading directly towards him with intent.

Mentally, Eli steeled himself and tried to think of casual ways to start a conversation with a very rich man without tipping him off that he knew that he was a criminal. Nothing came to mind, which wasn’t surprising considering he was also attempting to think of ways to casually bring up the murder of Lydia Fukui. Eli resolved to let Alec handle the conversation-starting part of things. He’d said that he’d met Tessaro before, surely he’d be able to talk about mutual acquaintances or something.

As it turned out, all of the evening’s careful planning was for nothing. Tessaro looked up from speaking to Casale, spotted Alec and Eli a few feet away, and said, “Ah, Walsh’s boys. To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing the two of you this evening?”

Alec and Eli stared blankly at him, completely taken aback. Tessaro smiled politely at the pair of them, like he _hadn’t_ just ruined all of their plans. It was fairly well known that Walsh had two male assistants, but they’d been counting on the fact that Walsh herself was more well-known with Summerport’s crime lords, which often let Alec and Eli get away without being recognized on sight alone.

Alec recovered his composure first, and offered Tessaro his hand, saying, “Mr. Tessaro, a pleasure to see you again.”

“Of course, good to see you again, Alec,” Tessaro said, with a smile that said he knew this was anything but the case, and shook Alec’s hand. He turned that smile on Eli and continued, “And you must be Walsh’s Eli Doyle.”

“I-it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Tessaro,” Eli managed to get out, and tried not to think about how sweaty his palm was as he accepted a handshake from Tessaro.

“So, why has Walsh sent her dogs all the way to an event such as this?” Tessaro asked lightly. “Surely she has no quarrel with an upstanding citizen such as myself?”

“We’re only looking for some information,” Eli said, thinking quickly. Tessaro was smart, he’d notice a lie straight away, but Eli hoped that a partial truth would do well enough. “You’ve heard about Lydia Fukui’s death, right?”

“Yes, it was unfortunate to lose such a remarkable woman, and before she made it to office,” Tessaro said. Eli tried not to frown- but it was odd, because Tessaro had actually sounded genuinely regretful. He was obviously a decent actor, given his double life and public persona, but why would he fake regret while having such a blunt conversation with them? It didn’t quite add up, to Eli’s mind.

“It was a homicide, the police are still searching for the culprit,” Alec put in calmly, like he was talking about the weather and not about murder with their best suspect. “Which is why Walsh sent us here tonight.”

“Are you accusing me of murder?” Tessaro asked and slowly raised one dark eyebrow. Rather than seem offended or defensive, he seemed genuinely amused by the prospect.

“No,” Eli said quickly, because the last thing he wanted to do was be kidnapped to a drug lord’s secret hideout after accidentally implying something he didn’t mean, _again_.  “The crime was too messy, and we both know you’re a careful man, Mr. Tessaro.”

Tessaro chuckled and asked, “So you are merely here to ask if I had a hand in it? Or did Walsh only want you boys here to gain a little more culture?”

A waiter paused in front of them, holding a tray of champagne flutes. Tessaro took one, held it out to Casale.

“I need to make a call, sir,” Casale said in a soft undertone, declining the flute. Tessaro waved him off without looking at him and took another champagne flute from the waiter as Casale disappeared into the crowd.

He offered one to Eli and said with a lazy smirk, “I’m uncertain if this is the best way of going about becoming cultured, if that’s the case. But I’d certainly be happy to help you do some… learning.”

Eli accepted the champagne on auto-pilot, since he wasn’t one to refuse free booze, and then abruptly realized that Tessaro was flirting with him. That smirk, the heavy-lidded gaze… Yup, definitely flirting.

“But you’re old enough to be my dad!” Eli squawked loudly and nearly dropped the champagne on Tessaro’s very expensive leather shoes.

Behind him, Alec slapped a hand over his face. “Only you, Daphne…” He muttered, just barely audible.

Tessaro threw his head back and laughed. “Well, what information were you looking for then, if this isn’t a social visit, Mr. Doyle?”

Eli was too busy spluttering helplessly, so Alec took over and said, “We have reason to believe that Ms. Fukui’s death may be related to her push for regulation on Luminex. We were hoping-”

“That I would be foolish enough to have had Ms. Fukui killed, and then admit to it in a public venue?” Tessaro supplied, still appearing immensely amused.

“Of course not, we only thought you might at least be aware of anyone that might have had reason to want her dead,” Alec said primly, lying through his teeth.

Tessaro snorted and leaned in closer towards the pair of them and said conspiratorially, “You boys aren’t terribly good at this interrogation thing, but since you’ve been so very entertaining, I’ll throw you a bone. The very last thing I wanted was Lydia Fukui dead. In fact, now that she is no longer able to push forward her little prohibition, I find myself in a bit of a financial pickle.”

Eli raised an eyebrow. “You’ll have to forgive me if that seems a little far-fetched,” he said and crossed his arms.

Beside him, Alec let out a small, soft _oh_ of understanding.

“Your partner gets it,” Tessaro said, with a shark-like smile. “Lydia Fukui’s prohibition on Luminex was going to be one of the greatest leaps forward for my… _side project_ , shall we say.”

“Huh?” Eli said, still not getting it. Why in god’s name would Tessaro want a tighter leash on his biggest money maker? It would not only drive down his ability to sell it publicly, but also reduce the number of potential customers.

“Did you ever study the prohibition of the 1920s?” Tessaro asked, and when Eli continued to stare at him blankly, he continued, “The rum runners were self-made billionaires by the end of the prohibition. When it ended, so did their influx of money. Now why do you think that is?”

Eli bit his lip and hesitated. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Working for Walsh was one of the most thrilling things he’d ever done, but seeing the new lows human beings could sink to was always a certain kind of awful.

Tessaro smiled indulgently and continued, “I’m certain you know the answer, but I’m always a sucker for a pretty face like yours, Mr. Doyle.” He smiled as Eli completely failed to stop his face from flushing brick red. “The answer is this: why waste time and energy attempting to predict the demand, when it is so much cheaper to control the supply? Particularly without certain organizations sticking their noses where they aren’t wanted and demanding a cut of profits for doing so.” Tessaro shrugged, as if breaking the law was an obvious cost-saving alternative. Given the sort of people Eli interacted with, this sort of attitude shouldn’t have taken him by surprise. The fact that it did either meant he was more naïve than he’d thought he was, or just more optimistic. Maybe he just wanted to believe for _once_ that every person in Summerport wasn’t morally bankrupt while making bank.

Tessaro didn’t seem to notice Eli once again losing a little faith in humanity, or was just too well bred to let on that he’d noticed, and continued on, “Now in my case, it’s somewhat different, Fukui’s proposed bill would have made things more difficult for my pharmaceutical company, but my side project would have absolutely _thrived_. My accountant was expecting profits to triple, and now we’re in a bit of a tizzy trying to recover from this change in plans.”

Eli sighed and exchanged a look with Alec, feeling a little stupid. He really should have clued in sooner. “I see,” he said eventually, when Tessaro continued to smile indulgently at him, which was beginning to surpass ‘mildly discomforting’.

Tessaro casually drained the last of his champagne and said, “So you can see how Ms. Fukui’s death would not be to my benefit, Mr. Doyle.”

Alec sighed as one more lead evaporated on them. He had no idea where to go from there, aside from leaving Eli to try and dig up anything more on Casale and Quinn’s connection on his own. Someone had to know _something_. Summerport’s high society was known for its rampant gossip more than its integrity.

“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Tessaro,” he said politely and began to steer Eli away before Tessaro could get any more ideas about flirting with his partner. Just as they were turning away, another thought occurred to him, and he paused and asked over his shoulder, “I don’t suppose the name Giovanni Quinn means anything to you?”

Tessaro’s face went entirely blank. “No,” he said, the words sound ever so slightly stilted. “Why do you ask?”

“He’s missing,” Eli explained, peering over Alec’s shoulder at Tessaro. He’d gone pale beneath his deep tan, his lips thin with tension. “And he’s tied up in Ms. Fukui’s death as well.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you there,” Tessaro said, emotion creeping back into his voice. By the time he finished speaking he was almost back to normal. If Eli hadn’t known better, he would have thought the man entirely at ease. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Of course,” Alec said politely and did a very good job of not showing how completely baffled he was.

The moment Tessaro was out of sight, Eli turned to Alec and said, “Well, that was really weird and yet incredibly not helpful at all.”

“That just about sums it up,” Alec sighed and turned to look out at the party they were on the fringes of. It was late enough that things were in full swing, alcohol flowing, couples clumsily dancing, and scarcely an empty spot to stand in. It was such a strangely familiar sight, almost nostalgic given how frequently he’d attended similar events in his adolescence.

“I guess we can go now, unless you want to go infuriate your parents more,” Eli said, watching Alec’s face, noting the strange bittersweet expression he had as he watched Summerport’s most elite mingle.

“Let’s call Walsh first,” Alec said, pulling his cellphone with a sigh. “Just in case she’s found another drug lord for us to fail at interrogating.”

~

Walsh frowned at her computer screen, glowering when her migraine throbbed angrily. She’d have to give up soon, or she’d be unable to work on anything for the rest of the evening. But for the time being, she persisted- she knew she was getting somewhere. She was close to the breakthrough she’d been waiting for this entire case.

Researching Giovanni Quinn had been simple. At first glance, he appeared an ordinary man who led an ordinary life.  He was 32 years old, worked as a computer technician. He had moved to Summerport five years previous and he had no criminal record. He was also most certainly dating Chanda Chlebek, though he’d done an above average job at concealing it from public purview.

More interestingly, he owned a home that was far beyond what his pay check should have allowed for. A quick check proved that the brownstone was not something he had inherited, and yet Quinn had somehow managed to purchase it while paying nearly 75% of the mortgage. It only took a little digging to figure out that it was a purchase that had been funded by Luvardo Tessaro himself, who had also deposited nearly five thousand dollars a month into Quinn’s banking account.

This gave Walsh pause. There was only so many reasons a man like Tessaro would spend nearly sixty thousand dollars a year on a nobody like Quinn, and very few of them were what could be called wholesome. The most probable answer was either that Quinn was blackmailing Tessaro, which seemed unlikely, or that Tessaro was paying Quinn handsomely for sex, which was only slightly less far-fetched.

Luvardo Tessaro was a self-made billionaire, and he could be considered conventionally attractive- why would he be paying a small fortune to an average computer technician? Of course, rich men like Tessaro frequently did incomprehensible things, but somehow Walsh’s gut was telling her she was on the wrong track. Walsh hadn’t gotten to where she was by ignoring her instincts, even if a part of her was continually annoyed by something so intangible being so integral to her work.

With so little hard evidence, Walsh was forced to admit to being stymied, and was forced to move on, leaving the sixty-thousand-dollar question behind.

Researching Saul Casale, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. He was all but a ghost. Simply searching using his name revealed nothing relevant. She found a few shell companies that were filed under his name, but no photos or anything even resembling anything personal.

It wasn’t terribly surprising: she suspected the name was an alias, since it wouldn’t be beneficial for a drug lord’s right hand to be easy to track down. She’d quickly changed tracks by searching for Luvardo Tessaro, who, as a public figure, was much more easily found. After reviewing nearly a hundred candid photos taken by aspiring paparazzi, she was fairly certain that she had a clear idea of what Tessaro’s right hand man looked like. He wasn’t in focus in most photos, or he was turned away, or partially cut out of the shot, but Walsh managed to managed to piece together an idea of what he looked like. He was a relatively handsome white man with short blond hair and appeared to be in his early thirties.

There was something eerily familiar about Casale’s face, though Walsh was certain she’d never met the man. Tessaro’s particular group was one of the few she’d yet to deal with directly. Her memory was all but infallible, so she would have remembered encountering him, even if only in passing.

Her migraine throbbed again, but she ignored it in favour of attempting to enhance her only shot of Casale facing directly at the camera, which was exceedingly out of focus. It was also several years out of date, evident in how more recent photos showed he’d gained several more pounds of muscle and had grown a rather bushy beard. Irritatingly enough, the man seemed to have an eerie sense for when he was being photographed, making it the only full shot she could find of his face. Unfortunately, her migraine was leaving her all but incapable of looking at the screen.

She stamped down the instinctually childish frustration at not having the capacity to do what was necessary, and called Raul Mullins.

He answered the phone on the second ring, sounding almost obnoxiously cheerful. “Well, hello there stranger.”

“Quieter,” Walsh grumbled, and gave in to the urge to close her eyes.

“Ah, migraine?” Raul asked, his voice much softer and filed with sympathy. Despite herself, Walsh found herself relaxing at the sound of it.

“Yes. Damn computers,” Walsh said and forced herself to focus. This wasn’t a social call. She had a job to do.

“You aren’t calling just to hear my voice then. What do you need help with?” Raul asked. Walsh had to hold back an irrational rush of affection at the knowledge of how well he knew her. Some might, when faced with Walsh in her taciturn case-mode, continue to attempt to engage in pointless pleasantries. Raul cut right to the point when necessary.

“I need a photo enhanced, I can’t get a clear look at someone in the background,” Walsh said and cracked her eyes open long enough to send Raul the photo.

“Hm, not my specialty, but I’ll see what I can do,” Raul promised.

Walsh didn’t hang up, content to listen to Raul mutter softly to himself. She was tired, her head ached terribly, and she hadn’t been able to see Raul or his wife Helen in over a week. She allowed herself this small comfort.

After a few minutes, Raul asked curiously, “Are these guys related or something?”

“What?” Walsh asked, her eyes popping open on reflex before she quickly shut them again when the light in the room stabbed her through the skull.

“They look pretty similar, if you ignore their skin and hair colour,” Raul explained and then said, “Here, I’ll email you the picture. It’s not the best quality, but you can still see both of these guys’ faces well enough.”

Walsh reluctantly cracked her eyes and opened up the enhanced photo Raul sent her.

Sure enough, two shockingly similar faces were angled together in the photo. Tessaro had dark eyes, deep olive skin and slicked back dark hair that was greying at the temples. Casale was blonde, with blue eyes and pale, freckled skin. But if one ignored that, their faces were nearly identical, aside from Tessaro’s signs of his age.

Walsh frowned, pushing aside the throbbing in her temples. There was someone else both men resembled.

She opened up one of her images of Quinn and swore violently into the phone.

Giovanni Quinn’s mother was likely Latina, but he also clearly resembled Tessaro.

“I’ll let you get working on this,” Raul murmured softly in her ear. “Get some rest when you can- you can’t do any crime fighting if you’re flinching at every sound.”

Walsh grunted and hung up the phone, only barely registering what Raul had said.

Immediately her mind raced through the possibilities, but the most obvious one was clear: Quinn and Casale were half-brothers, through Tessaro. There was no other feasible option, the three looked too similar for them to be cousins or any other distant relation. Publicly, Tessaro had never married or had any children. And yet, he chose to keep Casale close to him. It was a miracle that their similar appearance had never been subject to gossip. Walsh was uncertain if it was because Casale was so unremarkable to avoid notice, or if it was because no one would look past Tessaro’s race.

Well, at the very least it almost certainly meant that Quinn wasn’t being paid for sex by Tessaro.

She could almost see how the whole puzzle fit together, but there were missing pieces that alluded her. Namely, how had Casale or Tessaro found the gun in Fukui’s home?

Before Walsh could continue to puzzle things out, her phone rang again, ruining her concentration.

She bit back a curse, and answered with a terse “Walsh.”

“Walsh, it’s Alec,” Alec said. He paused, frowning at the strange note he heard in Walsh’s voice. “Are you alright?”

“Migraine. No, I did not take my medication, _doctor_ , I have things I need to focus on without them clouding my mind. Why did you call?”

Walsh’s tone made it clear that she wouldn’t allow Alec to fuss over her health so Alec sighed and said, “We spoke to Tessaro, he sends his regards.”

Walsh pinched the bridge of her nose irritably. “Eli, did you march up to him and demand to know if he killed Fukui?”

“Why do both of you think I’m that stupid?! I’m technically a genius!” Eli shouted, voice indistinct, since Alec hadn’t put the phone on speaker, to avoid being overheard by the few passersby in the hallway they’d ducked into. An effort rendered entirely moot, given Eli’s shouting.

“He made us as soon as we approached him, Walsh,” Alec said apologetically, elbowing Eli when he crowded in too close. “But he was willing to speak to us. He took a liking to Eli.”

“ _Did he_?” Walsh growled. There was something about the unruly mess Eli called a hair style, along with his slightly too thin face, that appealed to criminals, possibly portraying a false sense of innocence and fragility that appealed to them. It frankly appalled Walsh that she employed a man who was so frequently abducted by men like Tessaro, just as much as it angered her because Eli was _hers_ , just as much as Alec was, and Ye and her other officers. Alec often said Walsh had a frightening possessive tendency, but Walsh knew that she simply had to take care of those who were useful to her.

“Calm down, he didn’t do anything other than embarrass the hell out of Eli once he finally clued in,” Alec said, but there was a similar irritation in his voice rather than amusement. Walsh approved. She’d need to find a suitable enticement to encourage such a sentiment.

“Okay- changing the topic to the real reason we called you, Walsh,” Eli said, having stolen Alec’s phone, face flushed with embarrassment. It wasn’t his fault he was sometimes slow about these things, he’d been too busy getting his degrees as a teenager to pick up the necessary skills to notice when he was being flirted with. “Tessaro isn’t the killer, he all but told us he had wanted Ms. Fukui to get elected since it would help his less savory side of his business thrive.”

“So in short, we learned basically nothing,” Alec grumbled. “The whole night was a wash, apart from Eli shouting at my parents in front of a good hundred people.”

“I told you I didn’t mean to!” Eli protested. “It’s their fault for being such judgmental jackasses!”

Alec badly stifled a snort of amusement, and Walsh rolled her eyes yet again at the pair of them.

“I had a more fruitful evening. Casale and Quinn are both Tessaro’s offspring.”

“They’re both his _sons_?” Eli demanded, loud enough that Alec had to smack him on the arm for drawing the attention of every occupant of the hallway. Thankfully there was only one distracted waiter, who swiftly went back to ignoring them, but it was the principle of the matter.

“I suspect Tessaro only recently found out about Quinn, as he purchased him a house only a year ago and has sent him nearly sixty thousand dollars since then.” Walsh let her gritty eyes close again, her head aching in a way that told her she only had a short while before she’d lose control of her faculties entirely if she didn’t take the damned mind-fogging medication.

“Apology money,” Alec surmised, not sounding terribly surprised. It was something he was familiar with- albeit on a somewhat smaller scale. Then again, his father had only ever had to apologize for missing his violin concerts and his high school graduation, not a solid thirty years of his life.

“Precisely. It leads me to believe the real victim of this whole debacle was Quinn, not Fukui or Chlebek.”

“You mean someone wanted to hurt Quinn so badly that they _framed his boyfriend for murder_?” Eli asked, torn between amazement and revulsion. “I’m not sure if I’m impressed at how complicated this plan was, or disgusted with how botched that crime scene was for someone with this much foresight.”

“So where do we go from here?” Alec asked, wearily rubbing at his face, feeling the way the stubble was already thick enough to scratch at his palm.

“We need to uncover who would have enough of a grudge to attempt to organize something on this scale, regardless of how sloppy the crime scene was,” Walsh said. Her voice had gone thin with pain and she had her free hand clenched in a fist on her thigh. Of all the damned times. It always seemed that the mind was willing while the body remained irritatingly frail.

“And we don’t know who would have access to Fukui’s gun safe either,” Alec added. “But that can wait until tomorrow. Take your pills and go the fuck to bed, Walsh. Doctor’s orders.”

Walsh had to admit defeat, the pain was beyond enduring. She grunted in agreement and hung up the phone without ceremony.

Eli and Alec regarded each other silently. Their suits were slightly rumbled, and Eli’s hair was back to its usual disaster from running his fingers through it constantly while they’d spoken to Walsh.

Finally, Alec broke the silence and said, “I’m almost offended that Walsh figured out so much while incapacitated and we managed to end our evening with even _fewer_ leads.”

Eli hummed consideringly, his eyes going distant. “Well,” he said slowly. “Not necessarily. I just had a thought- Casale was acting kind of weird around us, right?”

Alec considered this. “I suppose. He did leave a bit abruptly, and he was certainly less happy to see us than Tessaro was. But that’s not surprising, given our reputation. If Tessaro recognized us from a half dozen feet away, Casale probably would have too.”

“Yeah, but… Well, this is just me speculating, but what if Casale knew about Quinn? And he was, I don’t know, jealous or something?”

Alec quickly double checked that they were still alone in the little hallway, and said a little skeptically, “That’s a bit of a leap. Why would he be jealous of a regular joe?”

“Well, I’m willing to bet that Casale’s job is no walk in the park, probably has its perks, but no one’s allowed to know he’s Tessaro’s son. And then along comes some other kid, and he gets all of daddy’s attention and a shitload of money to boot? Without having to clean up after Tessaro’s shit?”

Despite himself, Alec found himself nodding along. “If this were the case… I doubt Quinn would be all that comfortable around Tessaro, a mob kingpin showing up out of nowhere and showering you with money would be more than a little disconcerting. I doubt he’d be soaking up all the attention happily.”

“Right!” Eli said, snapping his fingers at Alec excitedly. “So, there’s Casale, watching as this asshole nobody rejects what Casale’s wanted all along, and this pisses him off. So, he decides he’s gotta do something about his new baby brother- but if he whacks Quinn directly, Tessaro’s going to notice right away, and there’s no way he can hide this from Tessaro forever. So, he goes after baby brother’s closeted boyfriend instead.”

“Okay, going along with your crazy theory- which is based almost entirely on speculation, I might add- what’s stopping Casale from just killing Chanda and being done with it? He’s not in the mob to paint fences, he wouldn’t be squeamish about doing things quick and easy. Why bother with all the theatrics?” Alec asked, unable to stop himself from being drawn into Eli’s story. He was just so damned charismatic, when he wasn’t paying attention.

Eli only had to consider this for a moment, before he grinned and said, “Well, we were talking about the motive for Fukui’s murder either being political or personal- what if Casale isn’t as high up on the mob food chain as we think? Maybe he hears about that prohibition Fukui was gunning for, and he figures he can kill two birds with one stone- get rid of that pesky problem for dear old dad and get into his good graces, while at the same time putting his new brother through the emotional wringer as his boyfriend is dragged through the mud and eventually jailed for it. Maybe he even figured Quinn would split town with Chanda gone. Out of sight, out of mind, sort of thing.”

“What about the crime scene?” Alec asked, almost eager in spite of himself. It was moments like these when he could see what Walsh had seen Eli the first time they’d met- his incredible capacity for greatness, maybe the likes of Walsh one day even. “If the false evidence was as obvious as Walsh suggested, it doesn’t seem like it could be the work of a mobster, even one low on the food chain, as you said.”

“If he had an accomplice, one who somehow knew where and how to get into Ms. Fukui’s gun case, then maybe the accomplice was the one setting the scene while Casale took off, just in case someone spotted him,” Eli said, then shrugged and sighed, the incredible light leaving his eyes. Without it he just looked like his regular shabby self, wearing a suit that didn’t quite sit right on him. “I don’t know. You’re right, it’s almost entirely speculation based on next to nothing. I think I’m chasing ghosts here. I just want to find Quinn. It’s been two days, god only knows if he’s even still alive. I can’t imagine what Chanda must feel like…”

He looked so despondent that Alec couldn’t help but say, “You might be onto something. It makes a certain sort of sense, even if we can’t prove anything one way or another.”

Eli’s lip twitched, like he wanted to smile but was too tired, and he said, “Well, it doesn’t really matter. There isn’t much we can do except go home and-” He cut himself off abruptly, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

“And?” Alec prompted when Eli didn’t say anything further. He wasn’t sure he liked that look in Eli’s eyes.

“ _Or_ we could go check out a few of Casale’s properties,” Eli suggested with a grin that did not promise good things for the state of Alec’s dress shoes.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Alec said and crossed his arms firmly. “You’ll say you just want to poke around, take a look at a few places and next thing you know we’ll be trying to rescue a half dozen teenagers without any weapons or anything on our side, _again_.”

“That was one time!” Eli protested. He paused, considered things, then amended himself and said, “Well one and a half if you count-”

“I _do_ ,” Alec snapped.

“Okay, well both of those times worked out okay!” Okay- _ish_ , Eli had to admit, even to himself, but that wasn’t something to own up to when attempting to convince Alec of anything. “And I swear, no daring rescues this time. Strictly reconnaissance, just so we have something tomorrow when Walsh is back to her usual self. I just don’t want this whole evening to be a total wash.”

“There is no way I’m agreeing to this,” Alec said. He refused to indulge in Eli’s wild speculations, no matter how persuasive they were or how much Alec almost thought they could be plausible. He also refused to let Eli convince him to skulk around some abandoned warehouse like low-budget twin James Bonds in their suits, sans the guns and gadgets and actual combat awareness a real spy would have. “There is not a single thing you can say that will make me-”

~

“How the hell did I let you convince me to do this again?” Alec muttered to himself as they slunk around the corner of a garage in the center of the second most run-down part of Summerport. Eli didn’t even notice him, too busy peering into cracked, dirty windows and climbing over broken bits of metal with no regard for the state of his suit pants. There was already a tear on one of his cuffs and oil stains on both of his knees.

They’d left the gala two hours ago, and they’d spent the interim time checking out two empty warehouses and one abandoned parking garage. Each time they’d come up with nothing Eli had sworn they’d look at just one more place, this one was for sure the one. If he tried to pull that shit one more time, Alec was going to put his foot down- it was beyond late and well into what some might consider the witching hour, and Alec was done freezing his ass off and creeping around buildings owned by mobsters.

Just as he was about to really give Eli a piece of his mind and _mean it_ this time, Eli turned away from the window and whispered, “There’s people in there.”

Plans immediately forgotten, Alec picked his way over the broken pavement towards Eli and squinted through the filthy glass. Inside was one big room, filled with car parts and other pieces of equipment Alec couldn’t easily identify. On the far side of the room were two figures, likely both men from their builds and clothing. One was sitting on a chair, the other standing over him. They were too far away and the window too dirty for Alec to make out any distinguishing features aside from the standing man’s blond hair.

Alec looked down at Eli who was shooting him an expectant look. Alec rolled his eyes. “There’s no law against two men being in a garage in the middle of the night.”

Eli gave him an unimpressed look. “Right. In a garage owned by Saul Casale. One that’s been out of business for nearly two years. There’s nothing hinky about that at all. That blond guy is definitely not Casale either. I’m sure he’s just politely asking that other guy when his brakes are going to be fixed.”

“There’s no way you can be sure that’s Casale,” Alec said, squinting through the window. The blond man was gesturing wildly at the seated man, and pacing a tight circle in front of his chair. It looked like he was holding something small, dark, and gun-shaped in one hand.

“I recognize that suit,” Eli argued and then stood on his tiptoes so he could look through the window too. “Also, he’s holding a gun. Clearly something not good is going down.”

“Oh well, in that case, it _has_ to be Casale,” Alec said and rolled his eyes.

“Like Casale would be cool with some other dude hanging in his garage with a-”

Eli was abruptly cut off by the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

They both immediately looked through the window. The blond man had his gun pointing above the seated man’s head. There was no sign of blood. The shot had just been to scare the seated man.

Alec looked away from the window to say something to Eli, only to see him slinking along the wall towards the garage entrance.

“What are you doing?” Alec snapped and grabbed Eli by the upper arm before he could get any more bright ideas about going _into_ the building with the guy holding a gun, rather than away from it.

“I know I said we’d just look around- but that was before Casale started waving a gun around!” Eli hissed back at him, eyes filled with a determined fervor that Alec had long since known to dread. “We have to go in there now, before Casale actually hurts him!”

“There is no way I’m letting your unarmed ass go in there!” Alec said, shaking Eli by the shoulders for emphasis. “We can just call the cops and get them to do their damned jobs for once.”

“You and I both know that a call reporting gun shots from inside a building that Casale owns- and by extension a building that _Tessaro_ owns- isn’t going to get the attention of the sort of police officers we want to show up,” Eli said back. He didn’t even try to twist out of Alec’s grip knowing it was too firm, so he settled for glaring balefully up at Alec and setting his jaw stubbornly.

“What, so you want to march in there and demand that Casale let Quinn go because we said so?”

“Come on, give me at least a little credit,” Eli said, a little huffily for a guy who’d been kidnapped or held hostage on what seemed like nearly half the cases he’d worked on with Walsh. “We’d go in, wait for Casale to go take a piss or something and then hustle Quinn out of there, ninja-like. And worst comes to worst, Walsh’s been making me go to her martial arts classes like four times a week, I could probably kick Casale really hard before running away.”

Alec seriously wondered about him sometimes. Eli had to be joking. At least Alec was sincerely hoping he was.

Eli rolled his eyes, “Okay, not actually. But we could-”

At the same time as Eli began to speak, a dangerously cool voice said from behind Alec, “Perhaps you gentlemen would consider coming inside now. It is rather cold out here.”

Eli’s face went very pale and Alec very carefully turned around. Behind him Saul Casale was casually aiming a gun at Alec’s head. His voice might have been collected, but his face was anything but. His eyes were wild, and there was something about the way his mouth was twisted that Eli didn’t like. But the hand holding the gun was steady. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot.

“That wasn’t a request,” Casale added.

“Goddamnit, Eli,” Alec muttered and headed towards the garage entrance.


End file.
